The Dream of Immortality
by RZZMG
Summary: A zombie plague. Voldemort disappears. Hermione is rescued from Azkaban by Draco Malfoy. But nothing is as it seems. "Everyone's a monster, Granger..." Crossover w/Vampire The Masquerade. HP Zombiefest 2011 entry. Drama-Horror-Hot Shag! Post-War A/U. Story nominated for multiple categories at the 2012 Summer Round of the HP Fanfic Fan Poll Awards-see profile for details. COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **

**This story was my entry to the HP_ZOMBIE FEST CHALLENGE (October, 2011). I went with this prompt:**

_- a_queen_bee's "Zombies vs. Vampires" prompt as made on the HP_Zombiefest LJ site_

_- other prompt words: "immortality," "rose," "collar," "kink," "cough"_

**HUGE thank you goes out to my wonderful beta (Unseenlibrarian) – I owe you, again! Also, thank you to the mods of the HP_Zombiefest for putting on this fantastic challenge – what a great idea! **

**Hope you all enjoy! Please review and let me know, yeah?**

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**Disclaimer:**"Harry Potter" belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Bros. "Vampire: The Masquerade" and "Vampire: The Requiem" is copyright of White Wolf Game Studio. I do not own either story arc or any of its characters, nor do I profit in any way from the use of said characters and situations in this writing.

**Story****Details:** Novel compliant up to the night before the Final Battle of Hogwarts (May 1, 1998). After that, this story is completely Alternate Universe (A/U). Characters are OOC (out-of-character) because of the plot.

**Timeline:** 2001-2003

**Main ****Characters ****(by ****alphabetical ****order, ****last ****name):** Lucian Bole, Peregrine Derrick, Gregory Goyle, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, Adrian Pucey, Evan Rosier III, Cris Warrington, Blaise Zabini

**Secondary ****Characters ****(by ****alphabetical ****order, ****last ****name; ****all ****characters ****in ****this ****section ****are ****from ****the ****HP ****world**** – ****video ****games, ****official ****deleted ****novel ****characters, ****theme ****park, ****etc.):** Mafalda Bailey, Eleanor Branstone, Felicity Eastchurch, Vicky Frobisher, Sage Kelleen, Abigail Nicola, Latisha Randal, Patricia Stimpson

**Summary:**Voldemort won the war, but his perfect fascist regime came crashing down around his ears just three years later when a bizarre viral pandemic - a zombie plague - spreads like wildfire throughout the U.K. and quickly ravages both Muggle and Wizard alike. The Dark Lord disappears, and his hold on power collapses, leaving anarchy and chaos in its wake. The same is true of the Muggle government, and soon, the British Isles have become a quarantined biohazard region as millions become infected… Hermione Granger has been stuck in Azkaban for the last three years, a prisoner of Voldemort's regime. When the plague struck, the prison (run by Voldy's loyalists) was abandoned and those locked away inside left to die. Luck is on her side, though, because Draco Malfoy has been looking for her…

**Extra:** The zombie plague spread rate for this fic is based on the R0 rate (the basic reproduction number; that is, how many people a single diseased person can infect in one day) used to determine the Black Death (1347-1353, European numbers only). Research on magical creatures led me to the world of "Vampire: The Masquerade" and "Vampire: The Requiem," and I found it to be brilliant for providing me the set-up here for the overall explanation of Vampirism and Zombies in this story. I'm borrowing elements from that storytelling game for this fic.

**Rating:****MA+/NC-17**(_very_ explicit consensual heterosexual sex; implied [not described] non-consensual sex; profanity; alcohol consumption; mentions of a viral disease epidemic, the walking undead [zombies], vampirism, mental illness, rape, death, and cannibalism; Vampire blood drinking and mating)

**Terms ****from ****the ****White ****Wolf ****universe ****that ****appear ****in ****this ****fanfic ****that ****you ****need ****to ****know:**

Kindred = What Vampires refer to each other as.

Embraced = When a Vampire turns a human into a Vampire.

Sire = The Vampire that does the Embracing.

Childer = The human that has been Embraced and made Vampire. They adopt all of the curses and benefits of their Sire.

Diablerize = When a Vampire drains another Vampire of blood and eats their soul to gain their powers.

Antediluvians = Third Generation Vampires. These Vampires were supposedly created by Enoch, Irad and Zillah (the Childer of Caine – as in Caine & Abel from the Bible – the man who murdered his younger brother; Caine was Embraced by Lillith, Adam's first wife/the first woman ever made, who was kicked out of The Garden of Eden for tasting the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge – Eve was created after as Adam's companion). Lore holds there to be thirteen Antediluvians and from each of these vampires come the thirteen original Clans.

**Original ****terms/ideas ****I ****made ****up ****for ****this ****fic:**

Bloodswigger/Fanged Ones = nasty slang for Vampires.

Kine/Bloodlet = A newly made Vampire; a Childer.

Salus Revelio = "Reveal Health" – a spell I made up for the fic to check a person's health status for zombie infection.

_**ADDITIONAL ****INFORMATION ****ON ****THE**** "****VAMPIRE:****THE ****MASQUERADE/THE ****REQUIEM****" ****UNIVERSE ****THAT ****YOU ****MAY ****WANT ****TO ****READ ****(it ****contains ****important ****elements ****to ****this ****story ****if ****you ****are ****unfamiliar ****with ****that ****world, ****as ****well ****as ****other ****types ****of ****interesting ****information ****about ****the ****story****'****s ****characters) ****can ****be ****found ****in ****the ****ADDITIONAL ****NOTES ****section ****at ****the ****bottom ****of ****chapter ****two.** **You ****don****'****t ****have ****to ****read ****that ****section, ****but ****I ****encourage ****you ****to ****do ****so ****to ****fully ****appreciate ****the ****plots ****woven ****together ****to ****make ****this ****story ****work.**_

**Images ****to ****go ****along ****with ****this ****fic **(banners, characters, places mentioned in the story - remove all spaces to load the URL properly)**: ****http:/****/****s905 ****. ****photobucket ****. ****com ****/ ****albums ****/ ****ac260 ****/ ****RZZMG ****/ ****The%Dream%Of%Immortality**

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_**THE DREAM OF IMMORTALITY**_

**BY: RZZMG**

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_**Azkaban **__**Prison**__** – **__**somewhere **__**in **__**the **__**North **__**Sea**_

_**2 **__**April, **__**2001**_

Hermione had prayed every day for three years for death to come and take her away. So far, no one had answered her pleas.

After a thousand and sixty-six days incarcerated, or thereabouts, her unhinged mind began to wonder: what if there was no real death? You know, the type written about in books and shown in movies, where you saw your family members and the events of your life flash before your eyes like a picture-book or a Muggle film reel. What if dying was all just a joke told to smokescreen the fact that all you _really_ had to look forward to was gasping for your last breath and then the endless black, like how it was when you went under anesthesia.

She'd been operated on once to get some extra teeth removed because they'd been crowding her mouth, and had been put under anesthesia. Her parents had performed the surgery.

"_Count backwards from ten, Hermione." _

She'd struggled at first to breathe, as the mask fitted over her nose and mouth was too tight, but after readjusting it for her, her mother bade her try again. Always an obedient child, she'd done as asked.

She'd made it to eight before there was nothing to see, nothing to know. She was immortal and eternal in a realm of silence, empty sky and no ice cream. To a seven-year old, that was the scariest thing in the world - scarier even than the monsters living under your bed and in your closet.

She felt a lot like that now. It was pitch black here, in her cell, and it was silent. She was the only one still left in A Wing. Everyone else had died over the years. She was alone.

Maybe she was dead already and just didn't know it.

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**Azkaban Prison – somewhere in the North Sea**_

_**3 April, 2001 **_

The door to Hermione's cell was blasted open. Brilliant white light as she hadn't seen in nearly three years lit up the stone chamber, and she hid her eyes from it, turning her face into the wall. There was a momentary pause, and the air was thick with surprise. A nasty profanity was spat.

"_Salus Revelio." _

For the first time in months, she felt magic upon her. It brushed against her aura and tingled, making her shiver. The vibration cut through the grey wall of insanity that had covered and protected her mind for so long reminding her of what she once was and all she had lost. Memories flashed before her eyes – ginger hair and laughing blue eyes, Harry's death by Voldemort's hand, the rattling wails of Dementors as they roamed the corridors of the prison to which she'd been brought three years before and held ever since, cackling Death Eaters and loyal Snatchers delighting in sadistic violence and cruelty towards the prisoners… and then there were the dreams of red eyes rimmed by silver, and loving touches, of whispered words meant to sustain her flagging spirits, and a pledge of help soon to come…

"She's safe," a different voice hissed from the doorway. "Now hurry the fuck up. Sunrise is coming."

Footsteps fast approached over the stone, clicking loudly in her sensitive ears. She cringed back as far as she could into the corner, quaking in fear. Was this her fantasy rescuer come as promised?

A rough hand grabbed her by the hair and yanked, pulling at her to stand.

"On your feet," the wizard demanded. "Get up, Granger, get up!"

She tried to obey, but her legs had weakened from malnutrition, and her left hip had been broken the year before during a torture session and the bone had not set correctly. It did not allow her the type of freedom of movement she wished, and supporting her weight on it was painful. It's why she spent most of her time sitting or laying flat. She fell back against the wall, panting with the effort of just making it to her feet, and nearly slid back down to her bum. Her captor caught her up in his arms.

He smelled of sweat and desperation.

"Just carry her or something," another voice hissed from the doorway.

Her captor tsk'd, then bent at the waist and arranged her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. Her feet left the floor, and her bad hip shifted, causing the poorly healed bone to grate in its socket. Hermione gasped with the sharp pain.

"Salazar's stones, she stinks!" a third man stated from the doorway. He adjusted the weight of a body over his shoulder. "This one here does, too. Gods, are you sure this was a good idea, Blaise?"

The second man – Blaise, as in Zabini? – sighed in frustration. "Look, you wanker, we all agreed to this plan. Every man gets his own woman. I'm sick of sharing mine with you and Derrick. Just bathe your new, little slave when you get her home, Nott. You've got enough girly products in your bath to have her smelling like a rose come afternoon."

"Fuck you," Nott – as in Theodore Nott? – spat.

"Shall I send for some tea while we all discuss it?" her captor sneered, and the tone was so familiar to her, yet she couldn't quite place it. "Just move your arses, both of you. We're running out of time."

A noise from down the corridor had all of them freezing in place and straining to listen. A minute passed, then two, and when it was clear that whatever it was that had startled them had either moved on or was a trick of amplified sound from further away, the men let out their held breaths.

"I'm going on to find Greg," Blaise told his companions. "He's been gone for at least twenty minutes. Don't leave without us."

"Don't take too long," her captor admonished. "And remember to check for infection if you decide to pick up a second woman, Zabini."

Blaise hurried off, his footfalls loud as he ran towards the end of the row and headed into B Wing, where the less-important prisoners were jailed. She was in A Wing, where the remaining Order members had been kept.

"You're hurting my hip," she croaked to her savior. "It's broken."

Her captor adjusted her weight again to take pressure off of her injured bones. His solid muscles bunched under her belly as he easily held her up. "Do us a favour: keep your mouth shut, would you, Granger? I'd rather not attract unwanted attention."

Again, that voice… so familiar.

"Make sure yours stays silent, too, Nott," he warned his companion, heading for the door, his stride unencumbered by her weight, miniscule as it was. "The infected might be in here. If they hear us, I don't fancy a fight."

"No worries, mate," Theodore cheekily replied. "I zapped her good with the old mesmerizing stare and silence command."

Too weak to ask the questions that hung across her tongue, Hermione clung to the robes of the man who had hold of her, and hoped this was the rescue she'd prayed forever for.

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**3 April, 2001 **_

With a sickening pull and a crash of thunder in her ears, Hermione and her savior/captor arrived in a flash somewhere outside of the prison. She had no idea where, as she couldn't see much from her position hanging over the man's back. She could see a gravel walkway, that her captor wore black, and as she lifted her head just a bit, that they were surrounded on three sides by large yew bushes. Her eyes took a few precious seconds to register dim sunlight – the pinky-grey that comes just before dawn.

They were out in the countryside. She knew this because the air smelled sweet – heady with fresh dew upon the surrounding greenery. There was no city smog and no hum of cars or conversation. There was only the buzzing of insects and the calls of the morning birds happily greeting the new day.

She broke down in quiet sobs, clinging to her savior's back with a tightly clenched fist.

"Shut up," her rescuer commanded, and moved forward just as the sound of several more incoming Apparitions signaled they were not alone. "Hurry up," he called over his shoulder at the new arrivals. "I want the wards immediately back in place."

The group moved beyond the gates, and the man holding her up turned to close them behind. He cast several very strong protection and disillusionment spells back the way they had come, and then hurried to follow the others, adjusting her once more on his shoulder with an easy roll of muscle. Whoever this man was, he was strong, but not bulky. He was careful in his shifting of her, as if he was trying his best not to cause her undue pain.

It took several minutes to get up the long drive, and into the house. Hermione did her best to look around, but turning her head hurt, so she was stuck straining her eyes.

A huge, thick, wooden front door. Grey stone floors in the foyer - very old and worn. They took a set of stairs up into a room with wooden floors that were well-cared for. The place was drafty and smelled of pine and lemon polish. They passed through the long room, which was also vaguely familiar, and through a door at the other end. A long hallway, more wood, this time lined with carpet runners that looked plush and expensive. They passed by closed doors, and then she was hauled up another flight of stairs – these longer, more grand, made of marble. At the top, the corridor split left and right; they went right. The other men – she could see them now as she lifted her tired head – wore black robes, too. Dirt streaked their knees and shoes. Some of them had captives – women, by the shape of the dirty calves and feet – carried in the exact same way she was being held. They split, the others going left. She and her rescuer alone traveled through another hallway and into a quiet wing of the house.

None of it was familiar now. She could have been in the Palace of Versailles for all she knew, although the opulence around her wasn't _that _grand.

Finally, at the end of their corridor, they came to their destination – a private chamber, obviously the master's from the ornate doors she spied as they passed through them, and the way the cushioned carpet under her liberator's feet allowed for a softer stride. The doors magically closed behind, and the lock clicked into place.

They passed by antique furniture – a sofa, an end table, a cozy chair – at a dizzying speed, and then she was in what was obviously a bathroom and being lowered onto a vanity bench. "Stay here," her champion required, and stepped away.

The lights in the bathroom were bright, and Hermione blinked several times. Her eyes had been condemned to the dimness of torch and candlelight for most of the past three years, having had no window in her cell, and so it took a bit to adjust. As she struggled to regain her bearings, the sound of a shower running and the accompanying increase in humidity in the room had her heart racing.

Clean water. She hadn't seen it very often, aside from drinking, and then that had only been two cups a day. She hadn't bathed in… longer than she could remember.

"Mopsy, come," the strange man commanded and Hermione recognized the 'pop' of a house-elf Apparition into the room.

Glancing up, she saw that the small creature had appeared in the middle of the marble and tile room. It's long, grayish ears were folded downward in the meek, servant's pose and its eyes were on the floor. It wore a clean, magenta-coloured sheet-turned-dress over its thin body and appeared in good health.

"Master calls," the small, female elf intoned with great respect. "Mopsy comes."

"Bathe, clothe and feed her. See to her injuries however you must. Fix her broken hip, especially."

That voice…

Hermione looked up to confirm the identity of her rescuer.

Draco Malfoy calmly met her gaze, impassive and supremely confident. He was physically different from how she remembered him – filled-in with age, not quite so sharp or pointy, more aristocratic and handsome, sleek of muscle and long of leg. His soft, platinum hair fell just past his shoulders and was pulled back at his nape, and his eyes were that same silvery-grey that had always fascinated her, even when it repelled her in its coldness.

"Collar her," he instructed the elf. "And inform her of her new duties in this house, as we discussed earlier. She is your responsibility to instruct, Mopsy."

The little elf bowed at the waist. "As Master commands."

With that, Malfoy strode past her and out the door – out of the apartment. The main doors shut behind him with a resounding boom.

That was the day Hermione began her second incarceration, different in some ways from her previous, but similar in others, as she was quick to learn.

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**1 **__**May, **__**2001**_

A month had passed, and by now, Hermione well understood her situation: she'd been brought to Malfoy's Manor House in the Wiltshire countryside to be the man's personal slave. She was property now – _his_ property - and her life was forfeit if she displeased him in any manner. The collar around her neck was a daily, soul-crushing reminder of that fact.

Mopsy had indeed explained in great detail Hermione's responsibilities to Slytherin's former Prince so long as she lived in his service, as well as cautioned her to obey "Master Draco's requirements" – which turned out to be a list of bulleted, pertinent items written in a regal, arrogantly expectant tone. For instance, he cautioned her against trying to escape. In fact, he'd rather sarcastically pointed out on this instruction that if she so much as touched the wards that circled around the edges of the property, she would give 'extra crispy' a whole new meaning. The wards served as a sort of magical electrical fence with a voltage guaranteed to barbeque her inside and out. He also included times that he required her to perform her chores (which he listed, and which Mopsy verbally reiterated). He reminded her too that he expected her to keep herself clean, well-groomed and well-fed, and that he wanted her to regain her proper weight and looks, as he insisted that "no personal servant of mine will appear unkempt." He also rather strenuously warned her not to venture out of the room provided for her in the servants' quarters between the hours of eight at night and five in the morning, or face possible death.

As for her relationship with the man, well, he'd treated her fairly decently whenever their paths crossed – usually a few times a week. He never spoke harshly to her, although he wasn't by any stretch of the imagination warm towards her, either. He commanded, and expected to be obeyed, but his list of requirements wasn't very difficult to fulfill – keep his suite, his personal study and his clothing clean, and share in the tending of the gardens in the greenhouse. He didn't require her to cook for him or to bring him meals, or to draw his bath at night. She didn't warm his bed either, although she suspected someone in the house was doing so, as the mattress would be dented in two or even three places some mornings. The only disconcerting thing he did was stare at her when they were in each other's presence. She could feel his eyes watching her every move during those times, cataloguing her actions, and she wondered if he was looking for some fault so he could have an excuse to mistreat her as he once had during their Hogwarts days.

Overall, though, Malfoy left her to her own devices most of the time, providing her with a book a week for her to enjoy should she perform her duties without issue, and treating her no differently from Mopsy.

As for the other residents in the Manor, that first night she'd met in the communal servants' sleeping quarters all of the other eight serving women in the house – one for each of the men living there with them, including: Blaise Zabini, Theodore Nott, Adrian Pucey, Evan Rosier III, Cris Warrington, Gregory Goyle, Lucian Bole, and Peregrine Derrick. Slytherins, the lot. It made her uncomfortable to be around so many snakes, honestly.

According to the gossip she'd picked up from the other witches over the last several weeks, the nine Death Eaters and their nine servants, along with the single house-elf, were all holed up at the Malfoy estate because there had been some sort of pandemic sweeping across the U.K. for the past four months. Voldemort had fled in the face of it once half of his Death Eaters and Snatcher army succumbed to the disease, and no one knew where he'd gone. Without instruction or guidance, the nine school-chum Death Eaters had huddled together to combine their magic to ward off the outbreak, their plan being to wait out the illness, and then sweep into the abandoned land to claim it as their own once the epidemic had presumably died off.

The disease was apparently highly infectious, causing the dead to rise again to feed off of the living with a voracious appetite, although no one understood how such a thing was accomplished. The scourge had a one-hundred percent mortality rate and no known cure, though, and was passed by saliva – specifically, biting. It had been nicknamed, "The Zombie Plague" on the Wizarding Wireless Network (that according to Pucey's servant, who had commented that she'd heard all about it before the transmissions went off-the-air. This was around the same time in late March when the Muggles had evacuated the country and proclaimed the entire U.K. a quarantined biohazard region).

She wondered if the Muggles would just nuke the island. If so, no spell in a wizard's arsenal would protect against that kind of power. She mentioned her concerns to Malfoy one mid-morning, as she was preparing to hang up his freshly laundered clothes in his closet.

"Explain to me exactly how a nuclear bomb works," he bid, a marked frown crossing his features.

This was a difficult task, as to understand such a thing you had to understand atoms and their subatomic particles and how electrical charges worked to get radioactivity and its decay. However, educating others was one of Hermione's favourite things in the world to do, and it had been a very long time since she'd been able to metaphorically stretch the bounds of her knowledge. She attempted to explain basic Muggle science to him.

He was patient, sitting on the edge of his bed, listening without interruption for the entire hour of her lecture.

"In overview: Muggles have perfected the method for keeping plutonium in a subcritical mass, which will not support fusion. They've designed a mechanical delivery device – called a 'bomb' – that can be remotely moved anywhere in the world and detonated. Once the bomb is in place, they flip a switch designed to ignite the fusion reaction, and this causes the plutonium to go into a state of supercritical mass. BOOM!" She mimicked something blowing up with her hands, raising them above her head. "The area immediately around the detonation is immediately vapourized because of the high temperature, which is about the same heat as the surface of the sun. Beyond ground zero – the center of the bomb blast – the destruction radiates outward. _Nothing_ in that blast zone lives. The size of the blast zone depends on the weight of the bomb and whether it's delivered as a surface or air detonation. With the kiloton ratio that they have in most military weapons-grade bombs today, you can usually count on anything within one-hundred miles in every direction either dying or being exposed to so much radiation that they'll die within days. And then there's the fallout…"

"Why would Muggles make a weapon designed to kill everything on earth?"

Draco seemed very disturbed – angry, even - by the information she had given him.

She shrugged. "Why does anyone look to cause mass genocide? Ego, power, fear."

He looked at her as if he could see into her very soul. "So, you're saying it's in our basic nature to want to kill each other?"

Hermione dropped her gaze to the floor, uncomfortable answering that. Three years ago, she might have said 'no' – that such a will belonged only to a select few who enjoyed misery and control. Now, she wasn't so sure, because the truth was, if she could find the men who'd tortured and raped her repeatedly in prison, she would kill them. It wouldn't just be justice – it would be revenge.

"They'd deserve it," he murmured, and when she blinked and looked up, Draco was standing inches from her. She could feel his minty breath fan across her cheek as he spoke very gently to her. "The men who hurt you while you were in Azkaban deserve death. If you ever saw them again and _Avada_'d them, no one would think less of you." He reached up very hesitantly, as if unsure of the action, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. It was decidedly cool through her relatively thin shift. "I certainly wouldn't. I'd even help you, if you asked."

Blocking out her trauma had done wonders to keep her from falling apart, but now, flashes of horrible memories returned and she shut her eyes to them, taking a series of deep breaths to keep hysteria away.

"Yes, I think it's in our basic nature to kill, as it is to steal, lie and dominate. Human beings are selfish creatures," she admitted in a sorrowful whisper. "But we have higher reason, too, and a moral compass. They're all that separate us from the monsters."

Draco's hand slid off her shoulder as she finished her thought, and when she opened her eyes, he was across the room again, standing at the foot of his bed. His gaze was lost in the creams and whites of his bed linens, tracing the embroidered pattern of the coverlet.

"Everyone's a monster, Granger," he sighed, and there was a touch of remorse in his expression. "Some of us are just better at hiding it." He let that sit between them for a minute or two, and then turned and strode with purpose to the door. "I'll think on what you said and send Mopsy to find out what the Muggles and Ministry are planning for the handling of this plague." He opened the door, and his voice was resolute. "Maybe we can get them _not_ to bomb this beautiful country and kill us all."

With that, he left her to her chores.

As she began hanging his shirts on their wooden hooks, she thought it almost ironic that Malfoy hadn't put together from the discussion the fact that Voldemort had been a genocidal maniac, too – and that wizards like him and the Dark Lord he'd served were just as guilty as Muggles when it came to war.

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**1 June, 2001 **_

Settling into a routine and the new life she had been given had become easy for Hermione. Repetitiveness was the key.

Unlike the other women in the house - most of whom seemed torn between hating their servitude and remaining quietly accepting of it - Hermione actually didn't mind the work. It allowed her the chance to forget her awful past and to concentrate on the present or to consider the future.

Particularly, she spent days and nights contemplating the zombie plague and how its continued spread would affect her future. After her last talk on the subject with her Master, she began to worry. Had he sent Mopsy to find the Ministry, which had been rumoured to have moved to Paris? _Would_ the Muggles simply nuke the whole island and be done with it? To prevent contagion to the rest of the world, they just might. After all, who knew if the virus could be spread through water sources? Thus far, she'd been told biting seemed to be the transmission medium, but what if the disease mutated? Or even more fantastical: could a zombie simply walk on the bottom of the ocean to another continent and begin rampaging over there? It wasn't like they needed to breathe air. If such a thing were even remotely possible, could they infect the water as they passed through? If so, the whole world would be doomed.

She also spent an inordinate amount of time wondering what had caused the plague to begin with, and if there might be a way to develop a cure for it. She knew from the other servants' gossip that there were a lot of people – wizards and witches mostly, who could ward off their property – still living in England. They refused to abandon their ancestral homes, especially when they could easily defend them. As for the Muggles… there were a lot of unlucky people who hadn't made the evacuation boats or planes that had pulled out in early April. If they were still alive, they were living in the country, too, away from the cities where the undead seemed to coalesce. And, if the sickness only required a two-week pass for zombies to begin dying from lack of blood nutrition, then she knew that it was only a matter of time before the epidemic would eventually be over.

But then, that was assuming it only struck humans. Did it affect Dementors, Centaurs, Acromantulas, Dragons, Doxies, or any other of the plethora of magical creatures and Beings inhabiting the Isles? What about 'regular' animals, like dogs, birds, turtles, and fish? If so, it could be a long wait, indeed, before it was safe to emerge from behind bespelled walls.

Having done some rudimentary reading up on the Muggle science of virology and bacteriology the summer before sixth year (when she'd been confined to a healing bed rest for weeks because of Dolohov's curse), and her curiosity naturally piqued by such random thoughts, she finally plucked up her courage enough to ask the questions of Draco one afternoon. He listened, intrigued, his face a mask of contemplation for her words. "Figures you'd be the one to think up something the rest of us hadn't," he praised her with a smirk, and left, presumably, to speak with his fellow conspirators.

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**3 **__**June, **__**2001**_

"You've got your wish, Granger," Malfoy informed her.

He loomed over her as she scrubbed the marble tile of his bathroom on hands and knees with bucket and brush. She glanced up the length of his darkly clad body to meet his enigmatic gaze.

"Leave it, stand up and follow me."

She did as he bade, wiping her wet hands on a towel on the way out. He directed her down into what she knew from Harry and Ron's previous description had been the Manor's dungeon for prisoners. It had been converted into a fully-stocked potions workshop. "I've established communication with the new, self-appointed Ministry. They setup shop after Voldemort disappeared, and moved to France once the plague became an issue. Your concern about nuclear destruction is shared with the Minister. He doesn't want it anymore than we do, and his administration is working on keeping the Muggles from carrying through with such a plan. I've convinced them to give us some time to try to find a cure for the plague using wizarding means. They've agreed to look at it with Muggle science. If we can manage a cure in time, it means a full pardon for all of us for everything done in the war, and you and the other women can go free. As of today, you're no longer going to serve as my personal maid," he pronounced to her without fanfare.

"I expect all of your attention to be focused on finding a cure. Do you need anything aside from this?"

She gaped at him. "But… but I don't have the correct knowledge to go about even looking at viruses under microscopes, much less developing a cure for the deadliest one known to mankind!"

He showed her a stack of Muggle science books. All of them had library markings.

"Did you… did you _steal _those from a library?" she asked, appalled at the thought. Quickly, she rifled through them. "These are-" She shook her head, flummoxed by the sheer impossibility of the task he expected of her. "They're elementary science books. They don't tell me anything significant on the subject of viruses and bacteria aside from the very rudimentary understandings of them. I'd need higher educational texts – and about five years to study it all!"

"We don't have five years, Granger," Malfoy calmly stated. "We have six months. After that, the Muggle government is prepared to act. The Ministry thinks it'll mean the end of Great Britain."

She took a deep breath, seeking her center. "Look, I doubt the Muggles could come up with a cure in that time, and they're far more advanced than wizards when it comes to understanding disease. Maybe…" It pained her to say it, but she had to be realistic. "Maybe we should just go and let them do what they must here."

Draco put his hands on her covered shoulders, which forced her to look up at him. "My family came here in the twelfth century, Granger. The Malfoy homestead has stood on this very spot in various forms for over seven-hundred years. Everything I am and ever will be is tied up here, in this place. I can't leave."

"Then you'll die here," she pointed out, meeting his anger with her own. "You'll condemn us _all _to die here for your outmoded tradition and ancient legacy."

He opened his mouth to refute, but closed it again with a snap. His grey eyes were furious points of light in his pale face and his jaw was set in a stubborn alignment. "It's been my personal experience to discover that nothing motivates a human being more than a countdown to doom." He dropped his arms from her person and stepped back two paces, giving them both ample space to breathe again. "You have six months to make sure we _don__'__t _die here."

His face was as set as his resolve on the matter, and arguing it in that moment would be, she knew, an exercise in futility. For that reason, she chose to temporarily yield to the possibility of his plan.

Gazing about, she recognized in an instant that what she'd need wouldn't be found in a wizard's arsenal. "I need you to bring here Muggle devices to determine the type of disease we're dealing with. Microscopes, Petri dishes, droppers, vials…" She shook her head. "Finding a cure for this most likely can't be done solely by magical means. It's _going _to require a bit of Muggle science, too." She sighed, and ran a hand through her very short, pixie-cut hair – something she'd had Mopsy do that first day she'd arrived, as her hair had been so tangled and shorn at different lengths that it had seemed more practical to simply cut it than to try to salvage it. "I need to backtrack where the plague started and when. Any information on its origins would help-"

"Come with me," he redirected them back upstairs to what was, to her great delight, a huge library. "Mopsy, come," he summoned the elf. When she popped in, he instructed her to find the other Lords of the house and bring them to him immediately.

As they waited for the summoned to arrive, Hermione's body automatically headed across to the rows upon rows of ancient books, neatly stacked on shelves. She was afraid to touch anything, but her eyes skimmed the titles with a greedy awe. There were books on dark spells, ancient curses, magical creatures, wizarding history, political and game theory, and healing. This last group caught her attention, and she reached for a tome, only to pull her hand back at the last minute. She hadn't asked permission, and wasn't sure the books here were safe to open.

"Everything in this room is safe for you to touch. Take whatever you need," Draco informed her, coming up behind and reaching for one of the books on Middle Eastern wizarding medicine. "If you require research materials, and you can't find them here, simply tell me and I'll bring them to you."

She gratefully took the book from his hand. In the transfer, their fingers accidentally brushed and she paused at the wonderful feel of soft, pale flesh under her fingertips. It had been _so __long_ since she'd actually, willingly touched another human being's skin – at least three years…

His temperature was ice cold.

His breath on her neck was hot.

She froze, unsure if she would be punished somehow for her accidental trespass.

Instead, she felt his lips shiver right over her ear. Warm air tickled past her in a trembling breeze as he bent his head to the bend in her throat and deeply inhaled, scenting her. A deep, vibrating moan of interest and pleasure erupted from between his lips, and in the next moment, he stepped into her, pressing the full length of his body against her back. Solid, powerful strength cradled her painfully-thin frame. His magic rolled off of him in blistering waves of energy, stroking against her aura with bold, desirous caresses. It made her skin pimple, shot nerves of fire up her spine, and had her belly turning over in fear.

"Finally touching your Mudblood, eh, Malfoy?" Theodore Nott gaily called as he sauntered into the room and threw his long, weedy body into a cushioned chair. "About time."

In an instant, her Master pulled away.

He didn't reply to his friend's accusation, and her back was turned so she had no idea if they'd passed facial or hand signals, but she did hear the clink of glass against glass and the glug-glug sound of a liquid being poured into a container as one of them – presumably Draco, as from her peripheral vision, she could see Nott had not moved from his seat – took a drink from the traditional alcohol caddy on the other side of the room.

In another time and place, she might have been tempted to ask him to pour her a topper, too, regardless of what it was he was drinking. Her nerves could sure use a shot of liquid courage right then.

Taking a slow, deep breath, she tried to still her pounding heart, and turned her attention back to the rows of books to seek a distraction from her embarrassment. Thoughts of Draco touching her… She wasn't sure she could handle that kind of attention from him or any man ever again – not after what they'd done to her in prison.

Over the next few minutes, the rest of the men sauntered in, talking in twos and threes about the performances of their servants in bed, making deals to trade off for the night to measure them up and compare. The idea made Hermione positively sick, and for the first time since she'd given up in prison, she felt a spark of righteous anger reignite in her soul.

Draco called them to order with an easy clearing of his throat. "I spoke with my slave about her new task. She has concerns. I'll let her explain the Muggle science issues."

Hermione turned, recognizing her cue. With self-control re-established and a bit of steel returned to her spine, she stepped forward to the desk in the center of the room, to get everyone's attention. Before she could blink an eye, Malfoy reached out and grabbed her by the leather collar around her neck, pulling her into his side, making it clear that she was _his_ property.

She scowled up at him. "You're hurting me. And, really, where am I going to go?"

The fact was, she didn't have a wand – none of the women in the house did. From the beginning, in-between her duties, she'd spent her time looking for one, as well as anything else that might be used to aid her in an escape attempt, all to no avail. Further, the slave collars were charmed not only to resist being removed except by the hands of their Masters, but also to prevent the women from hurting themselves or others purposefully. They couldn't commit suicide or kill their enslavers to get out, and without a means to make it past the house wards anyway, she and the other women were virtually trapped there at the Manor. Malfoy understood all of this as well as she did, so why he felt the need to remind her of her captivity in such a chest-thumping, uncivilized manner was really quite absurd.

"Oooh, you'd better start training her, Drake," Nott teased, but there was a dark undertone to his words, as if he relished whatever measures were deemed necessary to 'tame' a servant. "Seems Gryffindor's lioness still has her bite."

"Did your stint in Azkaban teach you nothing, slave?" Warrington mocked, his light green gaze traveling up and down her form.

Although she was dressed the same as the other servants in the house - in a long, shapeless and ugly, dark grey frock that was belted with a simple strip of leather around her waist and wearing a pair of soft, leather shoes that had no heel – Hermione felt decidedly uncomfortable under the man's disgusting, obvious leer. There was nothing provocative about her appearance, but clearly, he found the significance of the outfit – that of a slave – sexually appealing. She shuddered.

"Mind your tongue, or I'll find a way to curb it," Malfoy growled at her, and yanked her collar again – hard. "Now tell them what you told me earlier."

In a flash, the reality of her situation came slamming home.

SHE. WAS. A. SLAVE.

The man who held her in bondage _wasn__'__t_ kind, he _wasn__'__t _her friend, and he _wasn__'__t_ a good man. She meant less to him than the dirt on the bottom of his shoes; she was a means to an end and that was all. Draco Malfoy was a cruel, sick bastard who had willingly served the most evil wizard in history and now enslaved human beings. Just because he fed her, clothed her and didn't beat her didn't change any of those facts.

Good Godric, she'd been treated so poorly for so long, that now that her situation wasn't as bad as it had been at Azkaban, she'd almost considered serving as a slave to be a comfortable lifestyle! She'd been sliding down that slippery slope into Stockholm Syndrome, hadn't she?

Well, she wouldn't be making that mistake again!

Concentrating on the lecture, she presented to the group what she knew about viruses from her research on Muggle science, and how inoculations were developed for some of the worst diseases in human history – polio, tuberculosis, smallpox, etc. Afterwards, she was sent back to the downstairs potions lab to inventory what she had versus what she thought she might need, while the men discussed what to do.

* * *

_**TO BE CONTINUED…**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**5 June, 2001**_

Two days later, Hermione's potions lab was appropriately stocked. Upon the flat tables, she found everything she'd asked for, including Muggle textbooks on the subject of virology, bacteriology, cell biology, immunology, and microbiology from The Sir William Dunne School of Pathology in The University of Oxford's Medical Sciences Division, various Muggle lab equipment pieces, and notes that had been transcribed by a Quick-Quotes Quill from each of the Death Eaters in the house detailing their memories of the beginning of the zombie outbreak.

As she read through the notes first – research was always the starting place before any lab work could be done – she grew more and more horrified by a logical conclusion that began manifesting in her mind. Hours had passed by the time she'd finished all nine accounts. It was now half past eight, and she was running upstairs and down the hallway towards where she heard voices and the clink of glasses. They were in the dining room. Well, this couldn't wait! Her hypothesis was too important not to interrupt any late night supper party.

Charging through into the dining room, she was greeted with a surprising scene that made her stop straight away just on the other side of the door.

The nine Death Eaters were seated around the table, only none of them were actually eating a proper dinner and there was no actual food anywhere in sight. Eight of the nine of them were, instead, engaging in acts of lewd sexual congress with their slaves all over the room in a Bacchanalian-type orgy, taking sustenance from the women. On every witch's throat were at least two puncture wounds and some bruising. Some of the women had multiple bite marks on their breasts and inner thighs, too. All were naked or in various states of undress and none of them seemed to be acting themselves, as if they were actually enjoying the rough (stomach-turning in some cases) sex play, including Rosier's servant, who had vowed just that morning that if her Master touched her once more, she would try to find a way to kill herself – because he apparently was compelled towards violence with his slice of sex.

Were they all under the Imperius Curse now?

At the head of the table, the odd man out sat, his sugar-white hair standing out brightly against the backdrop of his black clothing and the dark green upholstery of the chair in which he reclined. The fire from the hearth behind him cast him into a sinister shadow as he unconcernedly sipped from a crystal goblet of red wine and impassively watched the others have-off with their servants.

When he glanced over and his eyes met hers, Hermione physically stepped back. Malfoy looked almost demonic. The normal grey of his orbs was transformed a dark crimson red. When he pulled the glass away from his mouth and put it on the table before him, he licked his scarlet stained lips and smiled at her, as if he was the cat that had finally caught his wayward canary…

…and it was in that moment that she understood why he and the other Death Eaters had chosen to remain behind here in England instead of fleeing. The trip to Azkaban where she was picked up, the bruises on the necks and body parts of the other women who worked here over the past few weeks, her not being required to serve Draco any sort of meals, and her Master's firm requests that she leave his bedroom every night before eight o'clock all now made sense.

He was a Vampire.

So were all of the other men.

Godric's rod, no wonder Rosier's servant was always so sickly and pale! He was draining her dry!

And Malfoy's request for her to find a cure to the zombie plague now made perfect sense, too. It wasn't _just_ about keeping the Muggles and their weapons at bay. Vampires were undead, yes, but not necessarily (and if her new theory proved out, they were not at all) immune from the virus outside their gate. For certain, however, was the fact that the Vampires' fresh food source – that was, the women they'd brought here to serve their every need – could definitely catch the disease. Since Fanged Ones (as Ron had been so fond of calling them in their Defence Against the Dark Arts classes long ago) required fresh blood to subsist, and there was a distinct lack of that in the U.K. at the current moment, the men had to at least make an effort to protect their living servants – their immediate food source - from catching the virus.

Their trip to Azkaban to pick up her and the three other women they'd brought back with them now made sense as well. Where else could these men go that was relatively nearby and most likely safe from zombie infestation? Why, a prison island out in the middle of the Atlantic, that's where.

Son of a jackal, Malfoy had tricked her all along!

And Draco's denial to leave England was now completely understandable as well: he had, most likely, been Embraced by a Vampire belonging to one of the thirteen Vampire Clans that existed in the world. There were other factions out there, true, but the Clan Vamps were the most numerous and thus the most likely culprits of his change. If such was the case, then he'd be subject to the will of his Sire – the one who had turned him into a Vampire – as well as all of those above his Sire on his Clan's food chain. As a neophyte Vampire, Malfoy would basically become everyone's bitch - literally. It was a case of Vamp Politics 101.

Consequently, the same destiny awaited the other former Death Eaters living at the Manor House, too.

However, if the group remained here at the Manor House - in a land that everyone had abandoned out of fear – then these nine men had an opportunity to establish their own power base here once the plague ran its course. If the group was actually responsible for creating the cure to the plague, they'd be further revered, and their status within Vampire society would rise. In that case, they could set themselves up not to be overpowered by their Clan leaders and might even have the possibility of calling themselves independent and be left alone to their own devices to live in peace.

Now she could understand Draco's desperation to remain here in England: he was trapped between a rock and a hard place – between Scylla and Charybdis. If he did abandon his home in the face of the Muggle's threat of nuclear sanitation of the land, he'd be exposed. So far, only those here knew what he he'd been turned into; the outside world was ignorant of his Vampire status. He would then be required by Kindred law – which was universal amongst their society - to go declare his life and loyalty to his Clan leaders on bended knee. At that point, his fate would be no different for him than it had been under Voldemort's regime – most likely even worse. Staring that option in the eye, he'd obviously decided that it was better to stay hidden, and gamble his entire future on a dim hope that somehow they could stop the plague in time. If things didn't go in his favour, he was clearly determined to die here, under his own power.

Apparently, the same was true of the other eight Vampires, as they understood what she was up to in the labs in the cellar. Their talk in the library was proof of that much. She could extrapolate from that fact that the nine of them had chosen the very Slytherin way out of their predicament: they would manipulate the situation to get the outcome they desired, or they would die trying. They'd placed their faith in her hands.

No, _he_ had, for she intuitively knew it had been Draco who had convinced his companions to commit to the plan and to trust in her to see it through.

How could he believe in her so much?

Speaking of the Devil… Malfoy was on his feet, walking towards her in a flash - and the smoldering desire in his gaze was impossible to misinterpret. Apparently, he wanted in on the action, too, and she – his slave - was his intended target.

Notes shaking in her hand, Hermione turned and fled as fast as she could, shutting out the sounds of moaning and groaning behind her, her feet taking her without thought to the front door of the Manor. Yanking on the old, iron handle was useless; the giant oaken portal was shut up nice and tight. In her panic, that fact didn't stop her from dropping her notes and pulling at it anyway, kicking and hitting the door with a closed fist, begging for it to open.

"It's locked with magic."

She whirled around and Malfoy was stepping down the foyer stairs towards her, completely unhurried, knowing his little bird was caged and would find no chance for freedom today.

"Tsk. Tsk. You broke one of my rules, Granger," he chided her, having reached the bottom now and gliding across the floor towards her. "Eight o'clock is your bedtime, remember?"

She backed up, terrified, seeing no other way out, and the only exit available required her to get past him. "Th-the notes," she tried to distract him, pointing to the floor where they'd fallen. "I… I think I know what's behind th-the plague. Maybe."

"Is that so?" he nonchalantly asked, stepping over the pile of papers at his feet. "You can tell me all about it later. Right now, I want to celebrate my birthday with you."

Shaking her head, she tried to dodge first left, then right. He moved so fast that each time, he'd blocked her before her foot even finished putting all its weight down. "Don't," she protested, putting her hands up to ward him off, knowing it would be futile as her back pressed into the opposite wall and there was finally nowhere left for her to run.

Her heart thumped a mile a minute in her throat and down her ribs. It was painful to be this terrified. Not even the Final Battle at Hogwarts, with all of those curses flying, and dodging Nagini, and watching people she loved fall in the shadow of green and red curses had made her feel like this.

Between one blink and the next, he was suddenly there, in her face. His eyes were as brilliant as twin stars, burning her with their scarlet brilliance. Moving very slowly, he raised his hand and touched her cheek. It was a reverent touch. "So beautiful, even with your hair like this," he whispered, tracing the freckles over her nose, his fingers running up through her short locks. "Do you know how hard it'd been for me not to touch you, to pretend you mean nothing to me when the exact opposite has become the truth?"

She blinked, confused. "W-what?"

He met her gaze with burning need. "In your endless thirst for knowledge, I assume you've read about the different Vampire Clans?"

She nodded once, very hesitant, fully aware of the tingle under her skin where his cool – not cold this time – fingers touched her.

"Then I know you'll understand what it means when I say I was turned by a Toreador Vampire."

She grasped for the knowledge in her fogging brain. "T-Toreador. Th-the Clan of the Rose. Kindred of that line are obsessed with b-beauty – especially the beauty of mortality."

He smirked at her, and there was pride in his gaze at her excellent recollection. "Go on."

"Your disciplines – gifts of the Clan's bloodline – are heightened senses and extended perception, speed of movement, and charm and attraction," she went on, speaking in a rush, her voice rising in pitch and panic-level as he bent his head to sniff the sensitive skin behind her ear.

He pressed a small kiss to her lobe, as his hands slid along the wall to either side of her, caging her between. "What else, Hermione?"

"You're known for Courtly Love and an appreciation for the arts," she breathily stated as he licked over her pulse and his knee rose to press her thighs apart, pushing with the slightest pressure up in between the vee of her legs. "Wh-what exactly are you looking for out of this lecture?"

He nipped her very gently over her artery and she cried out, grabbing onto his arms to keep standing as her knees shook and threatened to give. "I'll tell you a secret that wouldn't have been in those books you've read, Granger: the bloodline of Toreador is directly related to the Veela. Like them, we feed off of sexual energy, not just blood. We're the only Vampire Clan who can do this. And like our Veela primogenitor, we prefer to take a mate - a Concubine through the ages, a never-aging, mortal wife." He pressed soft kisses along her jaw. "Just one woman to complete us and keep our monsters at bay."

"That's… um, su-super interesting," she stated, trying to move away from his seductive mouth, to escape his charms.

He nipped her again. Hermione felt the skin pinch and knew he'd drawn blood. With a groan, he lapped over the cut. "So good," he moaned, licking her, savouring her flavour. "You taste so good, my witch… _my mate_."

His lips closed over the wound and began to suck, and Hermione was utterly lost. The power of his magic rolled through her mind and aura, causing her whole body to go tight, wet and desperate for him between one heart beat and the next. Her knees gave out, but his arms were there to catch her, and with an easy pull of strength, he had her up and into his arms, bridal-style. They flew then through the house at a speed that forced her to close her eyes, and within seconds, were in his bedroom.

Clothing was banished with a wandless, non-verbal spell, and Draco lay across her, their bodies touching at every conceivable point. There were no words and no further foreplay necessary as he parted her legs and entered her damp, aching body with a deep, powerful thrust. He moved with an expert, fluid grace over her, touching her in ways no one ever had, continually coaxing her natural responses with an elegant, lovely technique. Caressing in a perfect rhythm with the ideal pressure, he dominated her with affection, rather than force.

Hermione lost all sense of self and time in their coupling. Malfoy brought her again and again and… _gods, yes, again!_... never ceasing in his worship of her body, banishing all of the evil done to her before at the hands of other men. Her pleasure poured out of her in sighs and moans and little gasps, each sound released into his smiling, greedy mouth.

When, at last, she lay exhausted, her body sore and tired, Draco nuzzled her pulse and a moment later, there was a piercing at her throat as his fangs fully pressed into her, followed by another blissful shattering in the core of her being that broke her in half with a sob…

He was there to hold her through their bonding, drinking her blood up with rhythmic swallows that matched his surging pelvis, and when his seed finally released deep in her womb, his mouth let go of its lock upon her and he cried out her name.

In the afterglow, his lips murmured soothing, calming words of adoration in her ear, but not once was there talk of love.

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**6 June, 2001**_

Hermione was awoken many times throughout the night and early morning as Draco left the bed and dressed, only to return an hour or so later, shed his clothing, and couple with her again. He seemed insatiable to cement their union, and to experience her in every manner possible.

He really was amazing at the sex thing. It almost caused her to forget her purpose.

This morning, as he lay sated and lightly slumbering, she got up and went into the bathroom, closing the door for her morning toilet. When she came back out, he was already dressed and across the room, sipping what looked like red wine from a crystal goblet.

"It's not wine," he stated, as he watched her eyes track the glass as he raised it to his lips and paused. "Vampires don't need food or drink in the human way. I can digest it, but doesn't settle well, so I prefer to stick to this."

She swallowed, feeling sick to her stomach, knowing he was ingesting the blood of one of the other women in the house. "Whose is it?"

He sipped, his eyes locked on hers until the glass was empty. Setting it aside, he licked every last taste from his lips as he approached her. When he was within touching distance, he reached out for her. Instinctually, she stepped away, crowding her body against the back of the in-suite sofa to keep him away.

Draco sighed and ran a hand through his hair, looking very nervous and agitated. "I don't want to drain you," he explained. "I took only enough last night for our bond. Anymore, and you'd be ill this morning."

"I _am_ ill - at the thought of you drinking some other woman's blood after shagging me into incoherency last night and this morning," she countered. "So, I'll ask you again: whose blood have you been drinking since I came here?"

He dropped his head and clearly bit back his temper. When he had it under control, he was able to address her again. His eyes were as cold and hard as arctic icebergs, however. "Pucey's woman. His particular bloodline, an off-shoot of the Lasombre Clan, doesn't require much sustenance, so he's able to share his servant with those of us who have forcibly been without - specifically because we didn't want to scare our Concubine."

"Is she the one you've been sleeping with, too?" she countered. "Even knowing you supposedly had a mate?" At his scowl, she sniffed. "Don't insult my intelligence by even attempting to deny it, Draco. I cleaned your sheets and made your bed for weeks."

"You know what I am," he growled, losing a margin of his tightly-held restraint, his voice raising an octave. "Toreador are sexual Vampires. It's innate to us to need that connection. I didn't want to push you. I wanted to give you some time, because I knew what you'd been through in that bloody prison, but I _had_ to have release, too – and blood." He stepped into her, and grabbed her arms in a tight hold. "If not for using the girl, I'd have fucked you six ways from Sunday the first night I brought you here." He pressed his erection into her and it was tight and thick against her belly. "I want you all the time, Granger. It's taken a great amount of discipline to keep my hands and fangs off of you for this long. Last night… I didn't want to say 'no' anymore."

She was quaking now, feeling the way he could easily manipulate her aura with his Vampire magic. Right then, all she wanted was for him to throw her down and take her again. "Why me?"

Now there was the ultimate question: why her, indeed? Just this morning, in afterglow pillow talk, Malfoy had told her that he'd been searching for her since he'd awoken as a Vampire months ago, and hinted that he'd finally found her through her dreams. She'd put it together that the fantasies she'd been having while in prison – of a silver-eyed savior who would come to rescue her - had derived from him. Somehow, he'd been able to locate her magical aura with his Vampire abilities, despite the distance, and to open a connection between them while she slept or was unconscious.

It had been _his_ whispered promises of freedom that had kept her heart beating day after day. He'd given her hope.

When the zombie plague had struck and Voldemort's regime had collapsed, only then had he'd been free to make his move. He'd liberated her from Azkaban under the guise of finding a woman of his own, and he'd convinced the others to go along with the idea by tempting them with the same opportunity.

But why had he done _any_ of it? Why _her_ of all the women in the world?

He stared at her with a passionate concentration that melted her to her core. "I told you: I was drawn to your beauty."

She shook her head. "B-but I'm not beautiful. Passably attractive, I suppose." She shrugged. "But I'm much too ordinary to be more than that."

His arms encased her, drawing her into the circle of his body's warmth. The blood he'd ingested earlier was pumping through his veins now, making him alive again. "Modesty becomes you, but I disagree. You are _quite_ lovely," he argued. "That's not what called me to you, however, Hermione. It's your beautiful soul I'm after," he admitted, dropping his mouth to hers and claiming it.

Her response was automatic: she kissed him back with an equal ferocity. Regardless of how she'd felt about him before last night, everything between them had changed the moment they'd bonded. Her magic felt different – almost as if it was in-tune with his, and her reactions to him were heightened. She no longer felt like a slave, but more an equal. She only hoped that belief would be true in fact once the ardor between them cooled, and not turn out to be a romantic fiction in her mind. It would be humiliating to return to the menial status she'd served in prior to last night after this.

Draco lifted her with an easy pull of muscle and took her to the wall. With a quick motion, he had his cock out of his pants and with a hard surge of his hips he was deep inside her again. Moving with driving, rolling thrusts, he had her gasping and gripping his white-gold hair, pulling him to her throat.

"I don't want to hurt you," he murmured with a shudder as his teeth scraped against her neck. "I'll only take a little."

She nodded and tilted her head to the side, desperate to feel his kiss again. "Yes, yes!"

He bit down very carefully, slowing his tempo to prevent injury to her. The moment the blood touched his tongue, he released his seed up inside of her with a deep moan. Even as he ejaculated, he kept moving, still very hard, the lock on her throat tight as he drank down her blood. Hermione wrapped her long, bare legs about his waist and held on as he rocked her from one orgasm to the next. When she became light-headed, he sealed the punctures on her throat with magic, and brought her to her final climax.

She actually passed out as she hit her high, so great was the pleasure.

When she awoke, she was on her back in the bed, and Draco was still balls-deep inside her. He lay motionless above her, resting on his elbows, watching her eyes flutter and waiting for full consciousness to return. When it did, he gave her a sultry smile and dropped his cheek down to rest against hers.

"Why you, you asked?" he whispered in her ear as he began pumping into her again, his rhythm the same as before. "Because you're perfection, Granger. You embody the best of all traits: Gryffindor brave, Hufflepuff kind, Ravenclaw brilliant, and" – he thrust hard, making her cry out at the thrilling sensation of his tip caressing the very back of her channel – "Slytherin clever. Everything you are is beautiful, inside and out… and a Malfoy only ever desires the best." He kissed her, tantalized her with his tongue, and drew her to him with playful licks and nips upon her bottom lip. "You've tempted me for years, my beauty, lingering in my thoughts even when I cursed you for it. It was my deepest, most private secret that I wanted you back in school from practically day one. No one ever knew, because I kept that truth hidden. Once I was Embraced, though, that desire for you grew and grew until I felt ready to explode with it. But you were chained up, and I was unable to go to you until Voldemort was gone."

He thrust deep again, every inch of his long, thick length driven inside her quim, making her pant with need for more. She dug her nails into his arms and whimpered her plea for him to stop teasing and to just _take_.

"It was agony for me to wait those long months," he continued on in the same provocative tone, totally in control of their love-making and his emotional responses to it, "so I met you in your dreams instead. I needed to touch some part of you, even if it was only your mind." He lapped at her nipple and then drew the taut point up into his mouth, suckling upon it for a bit before letting it go and returning to her mouth. "For almost half of my life, you've obsessed me to the point of madness, Hermione… even out of sight as you were for three long years. And now I finally have you, and I'm going to enjoy you as much as I can, my sweet, fuckable little mate - my beautiful Concubine."

She could hardly breathe for the pleasure he brought her. When he entwined their hands above her head and brought his blood-stained lips to hers, she tasted her life's essence upon his tongue: coppery, tart, but when mixed with his saliva, it was delicious. "You-you're… enslaving me," she protested, and they both knew she wasn't speaking of the 'slave' role in the way she'd been relegated to playing for the past few weeks, but in a way more emotionally destructive.

"Yes," he admitted without apology, kissing her again, thrusting his tongue through the seam of her lips and tempting her to play.

A mini-climax overtook her as he circled his hips at the same time as he thrust into her, and Hermione nearly swooned again. She'd sworn that the last time against the wall had finished her off for the day – that she'd be much too sore and sensitized for any more of this - but amazingly, Draco brought her back to this sharp edge of bliss for more and more, just as he had last night. This sexual ardor had to be one of the gifts of his Vampire heritage.

"Don't hurt me," she pleaded, knowing that fighting their relationship from this point on would be a difficult accomplishment. He had his hooks into her good now that he'd bonded to her, and her feminine intuition told her that there would most likely be no escape for her until his death. They belonged to each other now, and there was no going back.

He shook his head. "Never. Only pleasure for you," he promised, rolling his pelvis again, causing her to cry out with another mini-climax. They seemed to keep coming in little, warm waves, pulsing to life and retreating like ocean currents on cue with his wishes. This was definitely Vampire magic, for no mortal man could do to her what he was doing.

He brought her several more times in such a manner, causing beads of sweat to gather at every crease, in the smooth sway of her hind, at her hairline, and above her lip and brow. Her heart fluttered in her chest like a small, trapped bird as Draco placed her calves over his shoulders and rose up off her body onto his palms, staring her in the eye as he drove into her at that same, infuriatingly controlled pace. His body was covered in a slick sheen of sweat as well as he held back his strong desire to power into her, wanting her complete surrender. She could feel it. He was waiting, patiently, for her to drop every wall and give her heart over to him.

Hermione was too afraid to give this man – _any_ man – that much control over her after everything she'd endured. And truthfully, Toreador Vampires were fickle creatures, easily distracted by beauty in all its forms. What if he decided at some point later that he wanted someone else? She wasn't sure she wouldn't want to die if he found someone else who sparked his interest in this same manner. The thought of him doing this with another woman…

She shut her eyes and turned her head. "I can't," she whispered, feeling her tears threaten to consume her.

"You will," he answered, very assured. "Someday, you will."

She wanted to deny it, but a little voice in the corner of her soul whispered: _he's right._

Molten, silken heat bowed her spine and curled her fingers and toes as Draco proceeded to ravish her as he'd wanted to all along – with wild, insatiable pounding and lush kisses. Within moments, he brought her screaming in rapture, timing his release to her pleasure. As he fell into her embrace, emptying his seed deep into her body once more, he pressed his face against the bend of her neck and gave a reckless, venerate cry of her name.

**X~~~~~X**

Hermione made a mad dash to get dressed and get out of Draco's bedroom and back down to the one she shared with the other women in the servants' quarters the minute he stepped under the spray of the shower. She ached in every muscle as she ran, could feel his semen soaking her knickers as it slid out of her, and could swear she heard his knowing chuckle in her head, but she never faltered.

Once back in her temporary shelter, she slammed the door shut behind her and stopped to catch her breath…

The other slaves looked up at her from their various positions of dressing or preparing to leave for their daily chores. On the faces of all were curiosity and anticipation.

"So, the statute of secrecy is no longer in effect," Zabini's slave, Abigail Nicola, stated with her hands on her hips and a relieved look in her eye. The oldest of the females in the house, she had once been in Gryffindor, too, but had graduated the year before Hermione had begun her Hogwarts education. Truthfully, the witch intimidated Hermione a little, as not only did she boast a gorgeous complexion and a confident air, but she was also rather accepting of her fate, soldiering on despite her bad luck. "He's taken you, finally."

Pucey's servant, Sage Kelleen, a pretty brunette who was two years Hermione's senior and another former Gryffindor, looked up from tidying her bed with discernable guilt in her almond-shaped, coffee-dark eyes. _She's slept with Draco, too,_ Hermione was forced to recognize as their gazes locked. The thought hurt her and brought the green-eyed monster of jealousy to the surface. The rational part of her mind told her it was stupid to think such things, as that relationship was done now, most likely.

She dropped her attention to the floor only for a moment before steeling her spine and meeting the face of every woman in the room in a sweeping glance. "I take it you were all told not to tell me what they are," she stated, a touch of bitterness to her tone.

Mafalda Bailey, the spunky, younger witch who could boast being the only Slytherin in the extended Weasley family (her Squib father was Molly's estranged second cousin), hurried to her side. Over the weeks they'd all been working together, she and the short, little redheaded woman had discovered that they'd had much in common, both scholars and tops of their years when they'd been at school. As a result, she felt a relative kinship to the girl who had been sorted during Hermione's fourth year.

"We're so sorry, Hermione, but we were all instructed in the strictest manner not to tip you off or to openly speak of our Masters around you. The punishment was death."

Hermione saw red. "Who threatened you with that?"

No one spoke, but the other women traded looks. It was obvious the culprit had been her lover.

"Did Malfoy tell you why you were to lie to me at least?" she required, walking to her bed, which was in the middle of the dormitory-style room. She sat on the edge and faced the others.

The women gathered on the bunks nearby, sitting next to each other, their attention on her. It was odd that over the last few weeks, she and these women had bonded in their own way, so much so that there was an unspoken code between them to help, not hinder each other. Odder still was how they often deferred to her, as if her one-time connection as Harry Potter's best friend and as a figurehead of the Order of the Phoenix – no matter its ultimate failure during the Final Battle – gave her a sort of unofficial celebrity status. Truthfully, the idea made her feel queer, as she hadn't felt very brave at all over the last three years.

The leggy blonde, Felicity Eastchurch - a former Ravenclaw who was one year older than Hermione and had been the woman Theodore Nott had taken from Azkaban the night Draco had fetched her - reached out across the bunks to take Hermione's hand in hers. Her touch was soothing, carrying a wealth of unspoken apologies. "None of us still know for sure, but by the end of the second week, when he hadn't touched you, but his eyes followed you everywhere, we all guessed. He's in love with you, isn't he?"

"I don't think I'd call it love," Hermione replied, trying not to let Eastchurch's words affect her. "More like obsession."

"You're a lucky bint!" Latisha Randal dryly snarked. The dark-skinned witch - a former Ravenclaw who'd been a year behind in school - rolled her eyes and sniffed with disdain, flicking her long, micro-braided hair over her shoulder. "Bole doesn't look at me like that. He only wants me for my pussy."

"And your mouth," Vicky Frobisher wryly bit. Although the attractive Latina had been in the same House as Hermione, she'd been two years above her, and they hadn't been close as a result. Truthfully, she still remembered the witch as having once been a bit fluffy about the middle, but over the past few years, she'd thinned out and was now model beautiful. "At least he kisses you sometimes. Goyle's an animal. All he wants to do is bend me over the furniture and fuck me like a dog with his huge cock. It may feel good, but I hate how impersonal it is."

"That's because he's Gangrel," Mafalda lectured. "They're closest to the beasts of all the Vampire Clans. And Bole and Derrick are both Brujah – anarchists, rabble-rousers." She pointedly looked at Latisha. "You and I keeping them happy will prevent them from becoming violent like the resident Ravnos Bloodswigger."

Her glance swung to Eleanor, Rosier's slave, whose delicate, forlorn features were wane this morning. "I hate what Evan does to me," the eighteen-year old, the youngest of them, stated sorrowfully. "Some days I just want to die."

"Shhh," she was cautioned by Patricia Stimpson, who was also a year older than Hermione. The witch belonged to Cris Warrington. "Some of them have exceptional hearing!"

"Which ones?" Hermione asked, considering all she knew of the Vampire Clans. "Who belongs to what Clans, aside from those already mentioned?" Perhaps if she was armed with such knowledge, she could best consider how to find weaknesses.

Mafalda was clearly one in the best position to answer, as her reading habits and retention of facts rivaled Hermione's own. "We'll start at the top: your Malfoy is a Toreador – in love with everything beautiful." She gave Hermione a knowing smirk. "He's also wicked fast and has the ability to entrance and make the others feel awe for him. That's how he retains his power over them. His second is Blaise Zabini, a Giovanni, an off-shoot Clan. He's got a powerful bite, can command and make you forget memories. Vicious, they are. Theodore Nott isn't a Clan Vamp, either, but another off-shoot: a Serpent of the Light."

"Of the Followers of Set," Hermione interrupted, somewhat in surprise. "Obfuscation and powers associated with serpents – mesmerizing stares, poisonous bite…"

"His bite isn't poisonous to me. It's actually quite pleasurable," Felicity admitted, blushing. "And he can change his skin to scales when he wishes – usually to protect it from the sunlight. I've seen him do it once."

Mafalda nodded. "Right. Bole and Derrick are Brujah, as said – fast, power-hitters, violent to the core when angered - perfect front-linesmen in a fight, all bad and buff. In bed, they're like puppies, though – all play. They were best friends before being made Kindred. I heard a rumour that once they turned, they started fucking each other like mad because they'd been repressing their attraction for years. I haven't caught them at it yet, but I've seen them watch each other as they shag me and Latisha." She made a face the quite resembled Rita Skeeter's when she'd stumbled upon a juicy piece of gossip. "How hot is that?"

Hermione huffed and smiled, unable to help herself. Mafalda had a charisma to her that was hard to resist. She was outrageous, snarky and brilliant.

"So, who's left?" the younger girl wondered aloud, and ticked off the Vampires she'd already discussed on her hands. "Oh, yes… Rosier. He's a Ravnos." She rounded her eyes and leaned forward, as if imparting a secret. "Nasty blighters, the lot. Animalistic, can withstand physical attacks with fortitude, and they have an added bonus of being able to cast illusions that seem so real, you'll want to tear your eyes out. Too bad they're also cursed to have a single vice that compels them to act, depending upon their character."

"Evan's is to want rough, violent sex with his blood drinking," Eleanor murmured, shutting her eyes with pain. "He hurts me, and then apologizes, and I can tell he means it… but then he hurts me again the next time. It's like he can't help himself." She wiped at the tears glistening on her lashes and sniffled. "If he was just cruel, I could take it, but the sincerity of his 'I'm sorry' hurts me worse than his slaps or his multiple bites. I hate him, because I know he can't stop himself, even though he wants to. I wish I could escape him!"

Abigail's soothing hand on the young girl's back rubbed circles, and Eleanor fell into her friend's embrace and let herself be held and rocked until her round of tears subsided. Hermione felt sorry for her. It would break something in her if Draco were to hit her after what they'd done…

"Greg Goyle is a Grangrel," Mafalda continued, compassionately deflecting everyone's attention away from Branstone's moment of weakness with the subterfuge of educating them all on a subject most, if not all of them, were well acquainted with by now – the nature of their Vampire masters. "The Clan members are all animalistic and wild. Goyle can call animals to him and calm them, and can change his hands into claws that can cut through metal. _I've_ seen that first hand when he destroyed the bars of my cell in Azkaban for Derrick, who'd decided he'd wanted me. He really is a monster."

"Goyle's not that bad," Sage finally spoke up. "I saw him once summon song birds to his open hand to give them crumbs. He was very gentle with them."

Vicky snorted. "He's never once been gentle with me."

"Maybe that's because you're the only girl he's ever been with and he has no technique yet," Sage offered. "Also the beast from his Vampire curse makes it so that he loses himself in the sex. He can't be gentle." Everyone looked at her with surprise and growing suspicion. The pretty half-Asian was obviously aware of the scrutiny upon her, but she never lifted her gaze from the blanket of her cot. "He and I have talked," she offered in way of explanation. "Just talked - nothing else. I find him… interesting."

Vicky quickly moved to the other woman's side. "See if you can convince him to go to Adrian and trade us. I wouldn't mind your Master. He's gorgeous with that pale skin and those black eyes! And I have a weakness for very tall blonds, I admit."

Sage tilted her head, as if considering the idea. "He's a Kiasyd, an off-shoot Lasombra. That means he doesn't need sex as often as the other Fangs do. However, if you're seriously interested in him, you should know that he likes his women submissive and controlled."

"How so?" Frobisher probed, clearly interested in weighing the pros versus the cons.

"Ask me later, when we have greater time and privacy," Kelleen suggested. "But I will tell you this much: Adrian is a sexual dominant with a fetish for kink. He also has an incredible prowess, much like Malfoy. The shagging, sex play and blood drinking doesn't end until _he_ wants it to, no matter how much his partner pleads for a rest or to altogether stop."

Hermione's chest ached at her casual description of sex with Draco. Again, jealousy flared in her heart. She tamped it down, and was mortified that she should be feeling this way at all for the man who was her jailer.

Patricia shook her head, clenching her jaw, speaking up. "Well, he can't be as scary as Warrington," she whispered in a hiss, clearly afraid of being overheard. "In between the feedings and sex, my Master performs blood magic on me to raise his Vampire abilities. I've seen him cut open a rat and kill it, then use his magic to heal it and resurrect the thing. He does the same to anything he can catch in the garden – birds, insects, spiders, slugs. It's so gross!" She coughed a few times into the back of her hand, having gotten herself so excited that she almost choked on her own spit. "Honestly, he scares me most of the time with how powerful he is."

A boulder dropped into Hermione's belly at the implications of that last thought. "Do you think Warrington will try to kill Malfoy to take charge?"

Stimpson shrugged. "No idea. But he's a Bloodswigger, so you can't trust him. I don't like him." She swallowed several times and coughed again, suppressing it behind her closed fist. "Embarrassing! Pardon me – just need to get some water." She headed into the adjoining bathroom and grabbed a ceramic cup, filling it with the tap water and gulping it down.

Mafalda ran a hand through her bright red-orange locks as they waited for Patti to get back. In an instant, it flashed white, then black, then back to its normal shade. Hermione nearly started out of her chair in shock.

"Oh, my God - you're a metamorphmagus!"

Bailey looked at her with amusement. "You're only just figuring this out? Did you really think this" – she pointed at her nearly neon-highlighted hair – "was my real colour? I'm an ugly mousy brown, no thanks to my Muggle mum."

"Watch the Muggle bashing," Abigail stated rather firmly, a frown of disapproval on her face for Mafalda's prejudicial comments. She was still holding tight to Eleanor, whose sobs had quieted, but whose frail body was too limp with emotional exhaustion to support its weight, and she lightly rocked the woman as a mother might do for her frightened and tired child. "I'm Muggle-born, as is Granger."

The only Slytherin in the group, Mafalda held her hands up as if to ward off criticism. "I am, too. My dad was a Squib. That makes me Muggle-born, technically."

That brought an interesting thought to the forefront of the discussion. "Is anyone in this room actually pure-blood?" Hermione asked.

Everyone shook their head.

"Half-blood," Vicky volunteered.

"Me, too," Sage commented.

Patricia, Eleanor, Latisha and Felicity each nodded in concurrence.

"Funny how none of us are purebloods, and yet all the men in the house are," she commented. "You'd think they'd have been looking for pureblood girls to be their food source… unless…"

"There aren't any female purebloods left," Mafalda finished the obvious thought.

No one said anything for a few moments as that sunk in.

"Wouldn't turning an entire generation of pureblood men into undead Vamps who can't breed children undermine the Dark Lord's campaign for pureblood supremacy?" Vicky asked the obvious question.

"Unless he was experimenting on them for another purpose entirely," Hermione spoke up, trying to fit the different logic chains together to form a coherent picture. As was often her way, she stood and began pacing, talking through the issue aloud to figure it out. "Something occurred to me yesterday, when I was reading the accounts of the nine Death Eaters in the house regarding the outbreak of the zombie plague. What if… just go with me here, but what if Voldemort" – several women cringed at the name, but Hermione ignored the reaction – "was looking for the secret of true immortality through Vampirism? Think about it: he was obsessed with control and retaining power, but as a mortal human, he would eventually grow old and die. And from what I knew of him through Harry-"

"You mean Potter?" Abigail asked, sitting straighter, as if the name alone of Hermione's dead best friend could still summon courage in others.

Hermione nodded. "He and Vol… You-Know-Who," she quickly corrected to prevent another cringe-fest, "were connected at the soul level through a series of magical events involving him as a baby. In any case, Harry often spoke of Tom Riddle – that's the Dark Lord's real name, by the way – and how the man's ego was astonishing. It fits that Riddle would want to try to find a way to live forever. He did try several times, in fact, when he went after the Philosopher's Stone during my first year at Hogwarts. The Stone was known to extend a wizard's life. He also engaged in drinking unicorn blood for a while." That elicited gasps from those in the group who remembered their Magical Creatures classes. "He failed both times to achieve immortality."

"I heard the Stone was destroyed. Did you and Potter do that?" Mafalda questioned.

She gave a sad smile as memories of her ginger-haired best friend rose to the surface. "Yes, but Ron Weasley, your third cousin, also helped. He was, in fact, vital to continuously thwarting You-Know-Who's plans with us. We couldn't have done any of it without him."

The loss of her first true crush still pained her. He'd fallen in the minutes after Harry had, once Voldemort began turning his wand on others.

"But those weren't the only two attempts Riddle made in his quest for immortality," she soldiered on, tucking her private thoughts aside for the moment to concentrate on the subject at hand. "He also tried to use a very ancient and dark magic to accomplish the same goal: he split his soul into seven pieces and put them into objects called 'horcruxes.' He did that by murdering people as sacrifices for the magic to take hold." She sighed, thinking of the loss of life at the hands of the egotistical monster that had looked to thwart Death. "Harry, Ron and I managed to find and destroy all of the horcruxes but one. That's how Voldemort" – again with the cringing – "was able to defeat Harry in the end. You see, Harry was the last. Once he was de-destroyed," she stumbled over the word for the pain it brought, "Voldemort became truly mortal again. I'm sure he was looking for a new way to fix that problem without going through the whole horcrux fiasco again, as that method had nearly brought about his end." She looked up at the other women in the room, meeting an interested and concentrated audience. "Hence, turning to Vampirism for a solution."

"You mean he infected Zabini, Malfoy and the others to test which Vampire Clan would be best for him to join?" Abigail asked, her face a mask of disgust at the idea.

"That's barbaric!" Sage stated.

"I think it's worse than that," Hermione confided. "I think he wasn't just looking for a single Clan to join, but was looking for a way to combine all of their best elements into one single bloodline that he could claim for his own. I think that's how the zombie plague started."

Everyone gaped at her.

"How is that even possible?" Mafalda finally broke the long, contemplative, shocked silence in the room.

Hermione met the younger girl's stare. "You seem rather read-up on Vampires, so you'll understand what it means when I say Cappadocian."

Mafalda stood up very slowly, and her shaking hands met her mouth. "The Clan of Death. But… they're extinct, killed off by Augustus Giovanni, the leader of the Giovanni Clan, in the nineteenth century."

"Not all of them," Hermione challenged. "The Premascines – a small group of Cappadocians – were allowed to live. They hide out in the canals of Venice." She held up a finger. "But even if that's just a false rumour, we do know that the Samedi _aren't_ extinct."

Mafalda gasped. "Oh, gods, the rotting Vampires! I never considered… Slytherin's soul, it makes sense!"

"What makes sense?" Abigail growled, looking between the two witches with obvious confusion. "Let us all in on the joke, yeah?"

Hermione shook her head. "Unfortunately, this is no joke." She moved to her small dresser next to her cot and pulled out a clean uniform and knickers. Pulling her dirties off and tossing them aside for now, she hastily changed, unconcerned with her nudity, as there was no modesty in a dormitory setting. "You fill them in on the history of the Clans, Mafalda. I need to" – she swallowed, realizing where she'd have to return – "go see Malfoy and explain my working hypothesis. He's put me on finding a cure for this plague, and I think the key is the Samedi. We need to test the hypothesis."

"How are you going to do that?" Sage asked, sincerely interested.

Hermione quickly ran fingers through her short hair to tame it. It was a small vanity, and would have to do for now. As she reached the door, she answered her companion's question. "By capturing a zombie."

* * *

_**TO BE CONTINUED…**_

* * *

**ADDITIONAL NOTES:**

If you're a "Harry Potter" fan reading this story, and have no understanding of the Vamp stuff in this crossover story, no doubt it's confusing to you. I've included some info. here for you so you'll be able to better follow the story, though. See below.

If you're a "Vampire: The Masquerade"/"Vampire: The Requiem" fan reading this story, you're probably already aware that this is mainly a "Harry Potter" story with some elements of the White Wolf Universe interwoven into J.K. Rowling's Universe for a plot bunny. If you're confused by those "Harry Potter" references, check out the "Harry Potter Wiki" online for details as to the characters in this story.

**... ... ...**

Basically, Vampires in the White Wolf Universe are separated into three distinct classes:

1. Those belonging to the thirteen main Clans (they are named below).

OR

2. Those belonging to a lumped group of Clan-less Vampires called 'Caitiff' (these Vampires refuse to give loyalty to any blood line, regardless of their origins, and as a result are typically snubbed and sometimes even hunted down by those who remained loyal to the Clans)

OR

3. Those belonging to that single sect of freak human mages (called the Nagaraja) who managed to somehow turn themselves into Vampires without being Embraced, using only their magic to accomplish so great a feat (they're cannibals as a result, though).

**The Dark Mother – The Beginning** = According to the White Wolf Universe, Lillith was the first woman in creation (not Eve). She was willful, however, and was frequently denying Adam's affections and talking with Lucifer, whom she'd fallen in love with. Lucifer convinced her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, and she was sent out of the Garden of Eden as punishment by God. She hooked-up with Lucifer and learned everything about darkness and evil from him. He corrupted her. Supposedly, every demon in existence comes from her mating with Lucifer. She eventually leaves Lucifer to try to build her own garden version of Eden, as she is desperate to have what she lost.

**First Generation Vampires** = Caine was Adam & Eve's firstborn son, he the man who murdered his brother, Abel in the Bible. When he is sent to wander the Earth forever by God for his trespass, he comes across Lillith in his wanderings in the Land of Nod. They hook-up and she teaches him everything she has learned from Lucifer about darkness and evil. This knowledge further corrupts his black heart and he becomes powerful. Together, they have many children. Their children become Caine & Lillith's first disciples, who are taught a few of the things about darkness and evil that Lillith and Caine know. This group of disciples call themselves 'the Kindred'. They are not Vampires in the traditional sense at this point, just humans, but they are dark and corrupted by the knowledge they are given. Caine grows restless over time and he leaves Lillith to go out into the world. He encounters the generational children of Adam & Eve. He has sex with many of the women of Eve's line and had children with them. He teaches these children all he knows of darkness and evil, too. This set of disciples are named 'the Kindred' as well.

**Second Generation Vampires** = One day, Caine returns to Lillith's garden with an army of the children he made from Eve's line, and he begins slaughtering the children he'd made with Lillith, seeing them as abominations. Lillith escapes the genocide, but where she went to, no one knows for certain. It is also unknown if any of her children with Caine survived the slaughter, although it is believed not. After this, the legend states that four angels of God come to Caine to offer him a second chance. The first, Michael, offers Caine the Lord's mercy, but is refused, and curses Caine with weakness to fire. The second angel, Uriel, offers him redemption, but is refused, and curses Caine to fear the sun. A third angel, Gabriel, offers him a third path to be saved, but is refused; he curses Caine to stand between the lands of the living and the dead, to hunger for blood and watch all he loves wither and die, and his children to war amongst themselves. The fourth angel, Raphael, offers him mercy, a way to salvation called Golconda, if Caine but seeks it. Caine mulls over Raphael's offer, but never gives him a response either way. Raphael leaves to return to Heaven. After this, Caine's new curses take effect upon him. He becomes the first true Vampire in the traditional sense, hungering blood, fearing the sun, and hating fire. He takes his three most loyal disciples (also called Kindred) - Enoch, Irad, and Zillah - and gives them the first Vampire Embrace, turning them into creatures like him. These and all generations of Vampires made by being Embraced after them are known as 'the Children of Caine' and they are cursed to the fate of warring amongst themselves, of craving blood, of hating the sun and fearing fire, too. Caine and his Kindred build the first city, Enoch, as a way of forestalling the curses of the angels against sun and fire, and as a place where all shall live so a blood supply will be plentiful and close at hand. God sends the Great Deluge to wipe the first city off the map. It succeeds, and nearly kills all of Caine's children. He and his three Kindred Childer survive and rebuild after.

**Third Generation Vampires** = Called the 'Antediluvians'. These Vampires were supposedly created by Enoch, Irad and Zillah from the human survivors of Eve's lineage. Lore holds there to be thirteen of them and from each of these vampires come the thirteen original Clans: Assamites (Antediluvian: Assam), Brujah (Antediluvian: Brujah), Cappadocian (Antediluvian: Cappadocius), Followers of Set (Antediluvian: Sutekh), Gangrel (Antediluvian: Ennoia), Lasombre (Antediluvian: Laza Omri Bara), Malkavian (Antediluvian: Malkav), Nosferatu (Antediluvian: Absimilliard), Ravnos (Antediluvian: Zapathasura), Salubri (Antediluvian: Saulot), Toreador (Antediluvian: Ishtar), Tzimisce (Antediluvian: Ynosh), and Ventrue (Antediluvian: Veddhartha). These thirteen were struck by the curse to war amongst themselves and kill, and eventually they turned on their Sires and killed all three of Caine's Childer. Caine cursed every one of them with a different failing, which is where each clan's weaknesses derives. Caine disappears after this, and no one knows where he went.

**Fourth Generation Vampires** = With Caine gone, the thirteen Antediluvians set-up their own sects of disciples – their Kindred. These are humans they Embraced and taught their knowledge of darkness and evil. However, the Antediluvians were smarter than their predecessors and never fully taught their Childer everything they knew, so as to make sure their Childer never turned on them (as they had on their Sires). Some of these fourth-gen Vampires gained knowledge through their own experiments, and formed their own off-shoot blood lineages (example: Lamia off-shoot from Clan Cappadocian; Mariners off-shoot from Clan Gangrel, etc.). These off-shoots have all of the same benefits and detriments as their parent Clan, but they usually have some interesting new power that their parent Clan members don't have, or have improved upon a power that the main Clan possesses (i.e. Lamia have the ability to infect a fatal disease to the men that they choose to feed on; the Mariners have fish or reptile attributes to their features [scales, gills, webbed hands/feet – any combination thereof], and their magic is strongest in a water setting). Some of these fourth-gen Vamps also figured out the secret of killing their Sires (i.e. diablerizing them), as was the case with the Giovanni, who diablerized not only Cappadocius, himself, but also Lamia, the female leader of the Lami bloodline under the Cappadocian Clan.

Any Vamps after fourth-gen have the same powers/gifts of their Sires, but tend to be weaker. This is the bulk of the Vampires throughout history.

_**THIRD GENERATIONAL CLANS **(information provided for only those clans mentioned in this fanfic):_

**Brujah** = The Learned Clan. Anarchists (think: biker gang members/punk rockers). Fiery tempered and violent when provoked - trouble-makers. Peregrine Derrick and Lucian Bole were both made into Brujah Vampires for this fanfic.

**Cappadocian** = The Death Clan. A Clan of Vampires who are extinct now in the White Wolf universe, but their discipline was on studying all forms of death and un-living, including bringing the dead back to life.

**Gangrel**= The Clan of the Beast. Closest to shapeshifters of all Vamps. Strong, animal-like, not too bright. Don't like the Ravnos, close to Brujah Clans. Not usually attacked by werewolves or other types of animal shifters, who recognize their ties to the wild. Gregory Goyle was made a Gangrel Vampire for this fanfic.

**Ravnos**= The Wanderer Clan. Seen as gypsy degenerates by the other clans. Criminals with a specific vice that drives them and that they won't deny if provided the opportunity to indulge in it (each is different according to the host). Evan Rosier III was made a Ravnos Vampire for this fanfic.

**Toreador**= The Clan of the Rose. Clan of Vampires who are inordinately beautiful and obsessed with beauty (this includes the mortality of humans, not just art, sunsets, music and the like). Draco Malfoy was made a Toreador Vampire for this fanfic.

_**FOURTH GENERATION / OFF-SHOOT CLANS** (information provided for only those clans mentioned in this fanfic):_

**Giovanni**= The Family Clan. An off-shoot family of the Cappadocian Clan. Tend to only embrace/turn others within their family branch only. Italian-based Vamps. Betrayal to the clan is met with swift justice. They tend to like anything having to do with death - and they like feeding on victims who are close to or just newly dead (natural causes, not disease). Their bite deals more damage than normal and makes it difficult for them to keep the same feeding victim alive. Their primogenitor, Giovanni, diablerized his own Sire, Cappadocius, as well as Lamia, the leader of the Lamia blood-lineage off-shoot of the Cappadocians. Blaise Zabini was made a Giovanni Vampire for this fanfic.

**Kiasyd** = The Wierdlings. An off-shoot family of the Lasombre Clan. Skilled manipulators, tempters and plotters. Create and control shadows. Have a unique discipline that allows them a talent for acquiring and retaining arcane and rare knowledge. They can easily detect other supernatural creatures, such as fae and shapeshifters, regardless of what magic they use to cloak themselves as normal humans. They are excessively vulnerable to Cold Iron (they take heavy damage from weapons made of this material). The irises of their eyes change colour upon their Embrace to sable black and their skin becomes chalk-white (it almost glows blue in moonlight). Adrian Pucey was made a Kiasyd Vampire for this fanfic.

**Samedi**= The Walkers of Death. Clan of Vampires who continually rot and seem zombie/corpse-like.

**Serpents of the Light**= The Sacred Snakes. A small blood lineage that derived from the Followers of Set Clan, but broke off from them, claiming full independence. Manipulation by seduction is the tool of choice for the Serpents of Light, who play a dangerous game of attack and counterattack against their rivals with mortal pawns. Members of the bloodline wield the weapons of addiction and decay. They are expert at discovering a target's weakness, and using that tool (be it drugs, sex, power or whatever) to gain control of the target. They are extremely susceptible to sunlight. Theodore Nott was made a Serpent of the Light Vampire for this fanfic.

**Tremere** = The Usurpers. Mages who have discovered how to use blood magic as a great weapon and have no clan curse, as the other clans all do. One of the youngest vampire clans, having just come into existence during the Dark Ages. In the little time since then they have made incredible inroads within vampiric society and are arguably the most powerful clan in the modern nights. This was due in no small part to their strict hierarchy, secretive nature, and mastery of Thaumaturgy (blood magic), the clan's trademark discipline. Included in that is Biothaumaturgy (the study of Thaumaturigical Forensics and Flesh Animation), Mastery of the Elements (water, earth, fire, air, plants, metals), Mind and Body Control of others and self in all forms (Telekinesis, Precognition, Transmutation, Spirit Manipulation, Teleportation), Conjuration of objects, and Technomancy - all of which brought suspicion, fear, and respect from other Vamps.

_**Changes I made to White Wolf Universe canon to make this fic work:**_

In this fanfic, I have made the Samedi bloodline an off-shoot Clan of the Cappadocians, where it might possibly have derived (no one exactly knows in the White Wolf Universe what Clan they derive from, if any; rumours place them as possibly Cappadocian, Nosferatu, Nagaraja, or some combination of the three Clans – or maybe not related at all, but something else altogether that is unknown at this time). To make this story work, I made them Cappadocian off-shoot Vampires.

In this fanfic, I changed a bit of Clan Toreador history to say that their founder was a female Veela, instead of a female human, and as a result, all Vamps from this line are very beautiful to look at, have a powerful sexual chemistry and a need for sexual congress, and are always searching for the right person to take as their mortal mate.

Concubine = In this fic, Toreador Clan Vampires take human mates, or wives/husbands. This is their official term for that role.

In this fanfic, I am stating that someone in Blaise Zabini's family lineage was a member of the Giovanni family.


	3. Chapter 3

_**AUTHOR**__**'**__**S **__**NOTE: **_This chapter had a small revision in the middle. Minor, really. If you read it on LiveJournal at the fest site previously, then you might recognize the changes.

* * *

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**6 **__**June, **__**2001**_

Hermione found Draco locked up in his study, reading while lounging on the settee. The thick, embroidered draperies were closed, as they always were during the day around the house. Now she understood why that was. If someone were to open it and let the sun shine down on him…The thought made her positively nauseated.

"You hate me that much that you'd contemplate my murder?"

Her eyes jerked from the window to where he lay. He was watching her with guarded, dark grey eyes, his book lying flat across his chest, open to the page he'd been studying.

"It's not hate," she honestly stated. "I'm… well, I'm… worried for you. Walking around above ground during daylight hours is dangerous. If one of the others in the house wanted you dead, all they'd have to do would be to-"

"Open the curtains. I know," he stated, seeming rather unconcerned at the thought. "No need to panic, Granger. First, no one here is, as the Muggles say, gunning for me. I had each of the Vampires in this house take blood oaths to that affect before they stepped past my property wards. Those that wouldn't, I turned away. Second, sunlight doesn't affect me the same as the others. When I was first Embraced, I tried killing myself by walking in full sunlight. For my efforts, all I received was a nasty sunburn that stung like hell for a week before it faded."

Huh, weird. Now that was something she didn't know about the Toreador lineage – their susceptibility to light was minimized. Or this unusual characteristic could instead be an adaptation that Draco's Sire had carried and passed onto him when he'd been turned. Or it might possibly be a mutation caused by something innate in Draco – something in his magical essence that changed the Vampire's curse so that sunlight wouldn't be as much of a bother to him. The explanation could lie in any of those things or in none of them, but something else entirely. She wasn't sure, and wouldn't be unless she studied Toreadors in a lab.

Yes, she'd read all of Edward Worple's books and there had been plenty of Vampire information in her Defence Against the Dark Arts classes, but that alone wasn't enough to make her an expert on Vampires. If anything, she'd consider herself a well-read practitioner of knowledge on the subject. Yet, even she wasn't naïve enough to believe that even the human "experts" on the species knew everything there was to know about slippery, manipulative Vampires. She was sure there were a lot of precious nuggets of information that interviewed Kindred left out of their discussion – like the Veela connection, for instance. That hadn't been anywhere in the texts.

Vampires were such frustratingly secretive creatures!

"I was just wondering," she murmured, transitioning into a slightly related topic, "why I'd been so thick before yesterday's revelation. I've been living in a house with a bunch of Vampires for two months. Why hadn't I put together the little clues that had been right in my face all along before now? I'm usually more astute than that. Did someone here do something to me to make me _not_ see such things?"

"Truth?" he asked. She firmly nodded. "I had Zabini plant the suggestion in your head not to give such things much thought when you first arrived here. It's a lingering effect that's been slowly waning as your mental faculties woke back up. You were severely traumatized when we rescued you from Azkaban. Your mind needed a break."

Hot anger churned her gut. "Mind magic is the equivalent of mental rape, Draco. How dare you!"

In a flash, he had the book down and was across the room, standing in front of her. "To protect you, my beautiful Concubine, I would dare anything – even your wrath."

He let her hand find its mark across his cheek, but the blow didn't faze him in the least.

"Got that out of your system now?"

Before she could answer, he had her in his arms and across the other side of the room, pinned against the wall near the cold hearth. "I find I'm hungry for you again," he murmured, nuzzling his nose and lips against her throat. He spread her legs with an insistent nudge of his knee and pressed upwards to stroke across her covered mons. "In both ways."

Hermione repressed her impulse to throw her arms about him and give in. Damn his Vampire magic! "We can't… we have to talk," she insisted as his fangs scraped across her pulse. "About the zombie plague. You promised last night we'd talk!"

He let out a deep sigh and relaxed into her. "Gryffindors," he groused. "Always ruining my fun."

She slapped his shoulder this time. "I'm serious, Malfoy. The point of you setting me on the task of finding a cure was to prevent nuclear armageddon on the Islands. That's more important than appeasing your needs."

He growled, and then to show her how wrong she was, he lifted her long frock and tore her knickers apart. "My needs are your _priority_, mate."

She raised a knee to shove at the juncture of his hip, but the action only allowed him to fall deeper into the cradle of her thighs. "That's more like it," he sinfully chuckled, and in a quick maneuver, he was out of his trousers and inside of her again. "A quickie, I promise," he offered, placing kisses along the bottom of her jaw and feathering over her lips. "I _need_ to feel your pleasure. It gives me peace, Granger, as nothing else can. And I can feed off of that sexual energy rather than your vein," he breathily murmured with a roll of his hips. "Come for me, beloved. I want to see your beautiful face when you let go."

His sultry words, combined with his incredible bedroom skill, were enough to win her capitulation. Seriously, how could she resist when his thick, hard shaft was rhythmically surging deep into her, destroying her senses?

It didn't take long. She came around him as he cajoled her response, his fingers flicking her clit while his cock stilled within her. She literally saw stars behind her eyelids, and she whispered his name as her body convulsed in miniature spasms of death and rebirth. As her high eventually dissipated, she collapsed into his arms, panting, her heart slamming against the back of her ribs. Her mind had gone temporarily numb.

"Hold still," he bade her and gasped, arching his spine a bit. "I'm coming in you, my beauty. Can you feel it?"

Her breath held as she felt the pulse of his release. Hot, sticky seed filled her channel in a burst, followed by another and another. Draco was shaking and quietly shuddering for breath as each ejaculation erupted from him, riding the beautiful highs of his culmination.

When he finally calmed, he held onto her as if he never wanted to let her go. Hermione's heart tugged, but she tamped it down. Temporary… she was a temporary interest to him. He would grow tired of her soon. It was the Toreador way.

"No," he warned her as she tried to struggle from his grasp, to disconnect their bodies and put some distance between them before she irrevocably lost her sanity. "Don't do that, Hermione. Don't close down on me again."

"Let me go, please." She was shaking inside and out and there were standing tears in her eyes. She felt unhinged, vulnerable. "_Please,_ Draco."

He seemed to deflate and sighed again. With strength that was incredible to behold, he lifted her off of his still erect member and set her on her feet before him. When he was sure she could hold her own weight up, he let her go and stepped back. Tucking his penis and his wrinkled, dark blue silk shirt back into his pants, he buttoned and zipped up, and re-notched his belt.

Hermione demurely reached under her shift to remove the lingering scrap of fabric that was her knickers. With nowhere to put them, she handed them to Draco when he held his palm out. With a flicker of his wrist, they were banished by magic to null-space, where _Evanesco_'d items went. "Thank you," she offered, "although it would have been nice not to have lost them. I only have three pair left."

"Exciting though the thought of your undergarments – or lack thereof – are, Granger, why don't we get down to the business you wanted to discuss earlier?" he replied, running a hand through his long hair to smooth it. His voice was neutral, giving no hint as to his emotional state. It was as if a switch had flicked off inside his head now that his need for sex and feeding had been satisfied. He secreted that part of himself back into the vaults of his personality once more, and returned to the cold man she'd known when she'd first arrived here at the Manor.

The change threw her off-balance, and it took a moment longer for Hermione to regain her bearings. "Right," she determined, regaining her command of the situation. "The plague – I think I may have an idea of how it started."

Draco took a seat in the high-back chair behind the study's massive desk. Crossing his legs in the gentleman's style, he sat back and folded his hands over his abdomen, and gave her his undivided attention. "Explain, from the beginning."

Godric's bane, that imperious tone was sexy! She'd always harboured a secret fetish for the severe authoritarian…

His slow, naughty grin told her that he knew what she was thinking.

Again, like the turning on of a light, he was back to being playful with her. Honestly, the man's moods jumped about faster than a cat on a hot tin roof!

She primly cleared her throat and ignored the heat in her cheeks, launching into a similar explanation to the one she had given earlier to the women regarding her thoughts on Voldemort's intentions by allowing his Death Eaters to be Embraced by Vampires.

Draco easily confirmed her suspicions with a nod. "He never stated outright in front of us that his intentions were so, but we all guessed what the Old Snake was up to. There was no chance to stop him, however. He had every male Death Eater under the age of thirty randomly locked into separate rooms at Hogwarts, our wands confiscated. We'd be there anywhere from three days to a week, depending on the Dark Lord's schedule. Our only sustenance provided in that time was water; he denied us food. By the time he showed up, we'd already been suffering from hunger. He'd then instruct a Clan Vampire that he'd had captured for these little experiments to turn us into Kine or die. He wanted to see the process from start to finish – which is different for each Clan - hence the reason he didn't just observe an already-made Vampire. Plus, he wanted to know how Vampirism would affect his connection to us through the Dark Mark. I think it came as a big surprise to him when, one by one, the Marks disappeared from all of us. He could no longer enter our minds without casting _Legilimens_ on us, and in the case of the Clan Vamps that _could_ resist such mind games, he couldn't read us at all, no matter how strong his Legilimency. The whole process fascinated him. He had my father taking notes on it."

"Do you have those notes?" she asked, her heart beating faster. If he had included the information on the Samedi vampires…

Draco reached into his desk drawer and brought out a stack of parchment several inches high. Mesmerized by the stack of research materials, she quickly hovered over to his side and reached out to gently touch them.

"When Voldemort ran, I took everything he left behind. I was looking for a way to reverse what he'd done to me and the others."

She glanced at him with sorrow. "There is no way to change it," she sympathetically, but very assuredly stated, her research on the biological implications of Vampirism clear. "You're not technically alive anymore, Draco. The only thing that keeps you walking around is fresh blood providing oxygen to your cells, allowing your brain to fire off the proper signals for your organs to function normally. Without that, you'd die permanently."

He uncrossed his legs and slammed a hand down on the desk, his face a mask of cold ire. "Then explain to me how I don't remember dying when I was Embraced. I really don't think I did, Granger. I recall being lucid for the whole thing, which is something none of the rest in this house can boast. And I can feed off of sex and not blood – something no other Vampires can do. Or how, unlike the others, I can walk around in the daytime. Alright, maybe not in direct sunlight for very long, but if I'm covered up and shaded, I'm safe from burning. And I don't need to enter a state of deep torpor to regain my strength every day like the others, either. Regular human sleep works just fine for me. I don't need food or water, but I can digest them if I have the odd want. I prefer not to, because it upsets my stomach, but I can eat like a human when required." He adamantly shook his head. "No, I'm not like the other Vampires in this house. I'm not truly as dead as they are. Explain to me how that can be if I'm not at least partially still alive."

She considered it. "Honestly, I don't know, Draco. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Antediluvian of Clan Toreador was a Veela, or perhaps it has something to do with your family's heritage specifically. It might have had something to do with the _way_ you were Embraced and _who_ did the turning. I'm not really sure. We can look into it at some point later." She turned her attention back to the parchment. "Right now, we need to find the cure to the plague before we all end up on the other side of a very big boom that no amount of sunscreen will be able to block."

He gave her a queer look, as if she were speaking a foreign language - which she was. She was speaking 'Muggle.'

"So, you think Voldemort was playing around with Vampire lineages. What does that have to do with the zombie disease?" he asked, prompting her to finish her hypothesis for him.

"Well, now that we have these notes, I'm closer to being sure one way or the other," she explained, "but I think it's more than possible that his 'playing around,' as you put it, was more than just a fascination with seeing which Clan would be best for him. I think he intended on combining bloodlines to create the strongest Vampire lineage he could. _That__'__s_ the one he'd turn himself into – the ultimate bloodline that had all of the greatest strengths of the Clans and none of their weaknesses. I could see him wanting to be the Prime Antediluvian – the one who could control all Vampires, and through that magic, all of the Wizarding and Muggle worlds. As a bonus, he'd gain true immortality, instead of the false immortality that he'd previously sought through owning the Philosopher's Stone, or drinking unicorn blood, or creating horcruxes."

Malfoy assessed her theory through narrowed eyes, looking off into the distance. "World domination and eternal life would _definitely_ be something he'd try for, the arrogant bastard." He focused on her again, reached up and pulled her into his lap. "So what went wrong?"

Hermione decided it best not to make too big a fuss over his handling of her. Honestly, she preferred this to his earlier icy demeanor. "If I'm right, he underestimated the magical abilities of the Cappadocian Clan."

Draco frowned. "Who?"

Lecture time! This was Hermione favourite part of any discussion.

"The Cappadocian Clan was one of the original and the largest Clan of Vampires until the Dark Ages," she explained. "Their Antediluvian, Cappadocius, volunteered for Vampirism to learn everything he could about the condition of life and death. His three Kine – those he Embraced himself – went on to turn others, who turned others, and so on. Long story short, Cappadocius eventually culled all Vamps of his lineage that he felt were 'unworthy' of his blood in an event called The Feast of Folly. The Feast was responsible for the death of most of the Cappadocian Clan. It also sparked a major fight between two of Cappadocius' Kine – one that ended in the death of one of them, and the defection of the other. The defector formed his own Clan from those Cappadocian Vamps who had escaped the Feast. Over the centuries, some members of that splinter group ended up in the Caribbean. The death of the Antediluvian Cappadocius at the hands of Giovanni - a fourth Kine the man had turned, who ended up betraying and murdering him in the end – coupled with their distance from the purer blood strains of Vampirism in Europe mutated the defector's group, however, degrading them over time. They transformed into a type of Vampire that resembled _rotting __zombies_. They gave themselves the name 'Samedi.'"

Draco perked up. "I saw that name here." He reached into the stack of notes and shuffled through them. Finding what he was looking for, he showed it to her. "Here, you see? My uncle by marriage, Rodolphus Lestrange, was turned by a Samedi in one of Voldemort's experiments."

"He volunteered to be Embraced," Hermione noted, reading quickly down the page. "But why?"

Her lover snorted. "Immortality, what else? Besides, his wife was not-so-secretly knocking-off Voldemort. Everyone knew. Maybe Uncle Rod wanted her attention back on him. Or maybe he wanted power of his own so he wouldn't feel like such a big pussy for being cuckolded. Who knows? He got the worse end of the deal regardless, poor fool."

She reached through the papers and scanned them. The last two parchments in particular seemed to provide the answer she was seeking.

"It says your Aunt Bellatrix volunteered to be Embraced, too, by a-" She paused in shock and re-read the passage again to be sure. "It says here she was bitten by a Lamia Vampire. They were an off-shoot of the Cappadocian Clan, too – an all-female cult of Vamps obsessed with the worship of the Dark Mother, Lilith. I was under the impression that they were extinct, though, as their Antediluvian, Lamia, was murdered – diablerized, in fact - and the clan systematically exterminated." She huffed with amazement and narrowed her eyes in thought. "It appears at least one of them escaped the genocidal blood-hunt that was believed to have marked their end in the eighteenth century. Hmmm…"

She tapped a fingernail on the notes that Lucius Malfoy had so painstakingly written. The script was neat, clean, and elegant.

"You know if Bellatrix was made into a Lamia, then that means she carried the curse of that bloodline, too: The Seed of Lilith." When she saw Draco's eyebrow rise in questioning, she explained. "It's a disease they carry in their mouths – a Clan scourge, if you will. If a Lamia feeds on a man, the disease infects and kills him by putrefying his flesh, decaying his body out from under him in a matter of days. He's alive through it all, too, until the heart and brain stop functioning. There's no cure for it."

She mulled that bit over in her mind.

A Lamia and a Samedi: two of the rarest Cappadocian Clan Vampires under the same roof during the initial outbreak at Hogwarts, where Voldemort had been conducting his experiments. Both were types of Vampires involved with the rotting of flesh. And soon after their appearance, a zombie pandemic erupted – a plague that was passed through biting and blood…

Instinctively, Hermione felt that the answer _had _to be there somewhere, but frustratingly, it remained elusively just out of reach. What was she missing?

"I'd hate to see what happened to the moron who diablerized the Lamia Queen," her lover stated as an aside, his sensual lips turned down in a grimace. "I bet he was surprised the morning after he drank her blood. Poor fool probably melted into a pile of putrid goo on the spot."

Hermione's head jerked up in surprise at the flash of inspiration she received from his casual comment. "Actually, he didn't. Giovanni survived – but the price was that every Vamp he turned after that was cursed to have a very painful bite. No, the Seed of Lilith only rots you if you're _bitten_ by a Lamia, not if you're the one doing the biting. Vampires that fed from Lamia instead always became… carriers… of the curse…"

She tapered off as the facts began to coalesce into a single coherent picture, the pieces of this bizarre jigsaw puzzle snapping into place.

The notes that she'd read over from the others in the house – specifically from Zabini and Pucey - had stated with assurance that the zombie plague had only begun spreading through the country once the Dark Lord had fled the castle and the wards around it had fallen, allowing those inside Hogwarts - the Death Eaters, Snatchers and their servants - to Apparate or run away. But _that_ had happened only after the plague had struck _inside_ the castle first. That meant that the contagion had begun within the walls of the school, and had spread outward into the general population once those bitten had tried to escape their fate by running. They'd infected the Muggles and the rest of wizarding Britain.

Reaching out, she looked for paper, a quill and ink on the desk. When she found them, she leaned over and began drawing a diagram from the thoughts jumbling around in her head, trying to tie them into some sort of cohesive picture.

She was close… so close that she could taste the answer…

Draco looked over her shoulder. "What _are_ you doing, my witch?"

A warm sensation lit up Hermione's belly when he called her 'my witch' in so possessive a tone. "Wait for it," she offered him with a distracted smirk. "I've almost… I think… this feels right." When she'd finished her conclusion, she looked at it, and then she showed it to him. "From the notes I read previously from each of the nine men in the house, and the ones I just scanned on your aunt and uncle, I conjecture that something like _this_ is how the zombie plague began."

Malfoy took one look at the drawing and his jaw dropped open.

"It can't be that simple," he protested. You're saying that somehow the curse of the Lamia mingled with the curse of the Samedi? What, did my Aunt Bella bite her husband, Rodolphus, and infect him, and then before he died from her curse, he bit some other unlucky bloke and contaminated him with _both_ the Lamia Seed curse and as well as the Samedi Necrosis Curse?"

"Or it could have been the other way around, but yes, essentially that's my theory," she stated, nodding. "Of course, we still don't know who 'Patient Zero' was – the first person infected with the combined curses. It was his or her immune system that somehow mutated the two diseases, transforming them into the one super virus – our so-called 'zombie plague'. Was he or she a living wizard or an undead Vampire before being bitten? Knowing that would make all the difference in determining what angle to take in trying for a cure."

She tapped the feather of Draco's quill against her cheek, considering where to start her real lab work. "I think I'll need to look at some of the blood of an infected zombie in a microscope to see how it mutates living cells, as well as blood from each of the Vampires in the house to understand how Vampirism alters living cells. I think it's important to first establish whether the two viruses are, in fact, related."

Her lover made a face and put a hand over his mouth, as if keeping back sickness. "God, how could Bella actually sink her fangs into a rotting corpse?" he murmured, still hung up on the idea that his aunt might have been into blood-play and necrophilia. The Toreador in him was showing.

Feeling rather frisky, and a tad mocking, Hermione waggled eyebrows at him. "Who said Bellatrix was only _biting_ her hubby?"

Draco swallowed and turned three shades of green – which was a funny sight to see on a Vampire.

_Hello, __Stockholm __Syndrome, __here __I __come__ – __full __steam __ahead_, she wryly thought as she laughed, kissed him on the cheek and got off his lap. "I'll need you to capture a zombie for me and figure out how to pen it in here so I can have access for the experiments."

He stood up so fast it startled her into taking a step back and cut short her humour. "No, absolutely not! I will _not_ risk you!"

Unwilling to be intimidated, she tsk'd and put her hands on her waist, giving him the stare that had often quelled Ron and Harry whenever they'd argued her logic. "Without a fresh sample of zombie blood and tissue, I won't be able to look at the cells properly. That's the only way to figure out if my theory is right or not."

He narrowed his eyes again. "Does it have to be a walking, shambling zombie, or will any part do?"

She opened her mouth to argue, and then realized he was quite correct. They didn't actually need a live (or undead, as the case may be) zombie in the room – only pieces of it, for the entire creature was one, big, infested virus carrier. Every part of it would be teeming with the stuff of decay. "Clever," she praised him. "Fine. Bring me something fresh though. It has to have been recently taken off of a zombie."

He gave her a knicker-melting smirk. "That we can do."

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**8 **__**June, **__**2001**_

Early that morning, Draco gave her three rather unexpected surprises.

The first was to require her to move out of the servants' quarters and permanently into his bedroom. After Hermione recovered from the shock of that offer, she began to actually warm to it. The idea of sleeping in a soft bed on a regular basis was quite appealing. The cot in the servants' quarters was more than adequate, yes, but it was lumpy and old, and the blankets were made of wool, not soft Egyptian cotton and silk, as his were. Being offered the softest bedding she'd ever lain in for a permanent home was _awfully_ tempting, she had to admit. Yes, she may have had her pride, but lying on a dirty, stone floor in Azkaban in nothing but a pair of thin denim jeans and a well-worn jumper for three years had taught her the value of not looking gift horses in the mouth. Plus, having access to a gigantic private bathroom – one that had a marble tub the size of the Isle of Man - rather than having to share a much smaller space with eight other women... Well, the offer was the equivalent of being thrown a bar of the finest Belgian chocolate on the planet along with a prime selection of those bodice-ripper romance novels that Lavender Brown would sometimes read to her and her roommates back in the dorms during their school days - it was _that_ good.

However, Malfoy wouldn't be Malfoy if he didn't say _something_ to spoil such a wonderful proposal…

"I want you here so that when I wake up, I can shag you if I desire, Granger."

Seeing red was one of those metaphorical phrases she'd always thought to be ludicrously ridiculous and quite impossible to accomplish until just that moment.

She opened her mouth to tell him to stick his offer where the sun didn't shine, but in a quick move, he shut her down with a kiss that melted her into the floor and turned her brains to utter mush. To make matters more shocking, as he worked her lips over, he reached up and removed her slave collar from about her neck, tossing it aside with a negligent throw. That was her second surprise of the day.

Playfully nipping at her now-fully exposed throat, he finished his explanation: "I also want you here so that when you wake up, _you_ can shag _me_ if you desire, Hermione."

What he was implying – that he intended to treat her as an equal from then on, and no longer as a servant – touched her deep inside, and was enough to make her agree to the new living arrangements. If he was willing to take this scary step, then she would be brave enough to meet him half-way. After all, it wasn't as if she didn't like the git. He was amusing and intelligent, and oh, so _very_ sexy.

The third surprise was to present her with a new wand. He'd gone out last night on a raid of Diagon Alley's abandoned shops with Nott, Pucey and Bole, and he'd picked the wand out for her from the ruins of Ollivander's shop. They'd discussed her old wand – lost during the war - a few days before when they'd talked about her needs for the new lab and the experiments she might have to run there. When asked, she'd told him its properties, and obviously, the man had remembered, because her new wand was made of the exact same materials. Oh, it wasn't a perfect magical fit, as each wand had a personality of its own and this one hadn't chosen her directly, but had _been_ chosen for her by a third party. However, it had seemed to accept her once she'd held it in her hand and said 'hello' to it.

Giving her freedom and her magic back, and making the public declaration of intent that they were a real couple, no longer Master-Servant bound - by moving her into his private chambers - had been so overwhelming that Hermione had burst into tears of happiness. For the first time in years, she'd felt truly alive.

Draco had then made her feel even more so minutes later when he'd stripped them of their clothes and mated her again in _their_ bed. In the throes of passion, she let the carefully guarded shields over her heart slip and allowed her lover in. It had been more than a little scary for her to be willing to trust this much so soon, especially after being deeply hurt by others in the not-so-distant past, so she'd taken hold of his hand, entwining their fingers, and held onto him for support.

As they made love to each other, she told him with her eyes what she was too afraid to speak aloud. Draco smiled at her in understanding, his silvery gaze lit with the same emotion.

**X~~~~~X**

Goyle and Nott arrived in the labs that night at a quarter past eight as Hermione was getting everything prepared to begin her experiments. She'd decided nighttime was best for such work, in case she needed any help from any of the resident Vampires in the house aside from Malfoy.

Her two "guests" each bore her a grisly gift…

Theo tossed a freshly torn zombie limb – an arm, from shoulder to rotted fingers – onto the center table. Gregory very neatly stacked a spinal column attached to half a brain next to it. "Delivery," Nott gleefully stated. "Picked them up no more than an hour ago in London proper – just as instructed."

Thankfully, Hermione was already wearing the protective biohazard suit that she'd transfigured earlier (she got the idea from the Dustin Hoffman movie, "Outbreak"), so when some droplets of blood splashed up and struck her chest from the limb that Nott had so carelessly chucked, she felt relatively safe - at least, enough not to go into panic mode. With a quick wave of her wand, she banished the blood and was spotless again. She then very carefully cast a Stasis Charm about the messy table, and _Scourgify_'d the area around it.

Taking in the two men next, noting the gore that covered their clothing, she cleaned them up with another magical wave. _"__Scourgify,__"_ she cast over both of them – three times a piece before she was satisfied that they were clean. "I want you both to Apparate directly from this lab to your bathrooms and immediately get in the shower," she instructed in a very no-nonsense tone. "Don't stop to talk to anyone or even to use the loo. Get under the water immediately and scrub up twice from head to toe with soap. No fooling around here, gentlemen. This virus is the most deadly disease on the planet, and I'm not sure if it affects Vampires or not, regardless of your undead status."

Nott looked suddenly very pale and panicked. "I thought it was only contagious if you were bitten by one of the infected."

She shook her head. "We have no idea as to whether this thing has mutated or not."

"Well, fuck-a-doodle-doo, if I'd known that in advance, I wouldn't have volunteered!" the Setite Vampire admitted. "Why the hell didn't someone tell me something _that_ fucking important?"

Hermione met his flared, panicked gaze with a steely resolve. "Consider yourself properly advised."

He looked at her then – really looked. "You're as cold and bossy as I remember from school." A smirk filled with fascination and sexual heat worked its way up his cheek. "Bet you like it rough in bed – a real hellion, yeah?"

Before she could open her mouth to remonstrate the man, Goyle had him by the throat with one large, meaty hand and his eyes shifted to the brilliant amber of a wolf. "She's Draco's," he growled, and his voice had dropped an octave, whisky-rough and full of barely-restrained violence.

Theodore's face paled out again, and his smirk disappeared in a flash. "Right," he agreed, putting his hands up to ward off the man who outweighed him by a good fifty pounds of muscle. "Joking, mate."

Greg released him with a solid push and immediately, Nott Apparated away, hopefully to follow her instructions to the letter.

"Thank you."

It was a surreal moment for her – she was actually was grateful to Gregory Goyle for something. The boy he'd been had been little more than Draco's stooge and as much a bully as his Housemate in Slytherin. As an adult, she supposed that he'd changed as a result of having been forced to undergo the Embrace of a near-rabid Grangrel, but that strong loyalty to Malfoy had, apparently, not wavered. No wonder no one moved on Malfoy's position as head of the household, despite how competitive Vampires were in general for top spot. With friends like Goyle, he had some powerful muscle on his side.

"If you need more, I'll go," he offered, then turned to leave the lab.

"Wait," Hermione called after him.

Despite his hulking size – he might have slimmed down in the middle, but he made up for that weight loss in pure muscle - Goyle stopped on a knut to glance over his shoulder at her. It struck her then how he had matured into a rather handsome-looking bloke, especially with the help of the added genetics of his Vampire Sire. His maker may have been more animal than man, but the Vamp who had turned Gregory into his Kine had also been noted as being a stunning specimen in both strength and appearance. Clearly, he'd passed those traits onto his Bloodlet.

She hoped she was making the right move here…

"I'm going to take a walk around the garden later tonight with Sage," she hesitantly stated. "We've cleared it with Pucey. Would you like to come with? We could use the… protection… you know, just in case."

At mention of Kelleen's name, Goyle's expression lit up with interest. He nodded in acceptance of the invite.

"Meet us at the back door off of the kitchens at eleven, then," she cheerfully directed. "Oh, and please don't forget to directly Apparate to your room to shower from here… and maybe even burn those clothes and shoes, as an added precaution. If the zombie disease spread within these walls, everyone here could die. I can't stress that enough, Gregory. Constant vigilance!"

His grin was slow, but bright when it appeared. "You sound like Old Mad-Eye," he commented, and in a rumble of thunder, he Disapparated.

It was funny how such a small reminder of their school days could once more depress her.

Shunting aside memories of fourth year, and their inevitable logic chain to Harry, Ron, Cedric and the false Moody, she carefully began dissecting the zombie flesh and taking samples, using magic to move the infected pieces onto prepared microscope slides. Thank heavens Malfoy had been able to get her the kind of research materials on viruses and the equipment she needed by raiding a Muggle hospital pathology lab, as she'd directed him to do just yesterday. There was a built-in digital camera on the microscope he'd brought back. It also had a memory storage card attached so she could save the pictures and then go back and cycle through them on the attached LCD screen, if she wanted. The whole thing was powered by Lithium-ion batteries with a long lifespan, thankfully, so she didn't need to come up with a way of jury-rigging electricity to make things work.

The real work began that night.

* * *

_**TO BE CONTINUED…**_

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:**

**Lamia** = The Sisters of Death. A Fourth Generational Clan. An extinct blood lineage of Vampires off of the Cappadocian Clan who are all women. When they bite males of any species, they curse them with "The Seed of Lilith," which is a virulent and fatal disease. Bellatrix Lestrange was made a Lamia Vampire for this fanfic.

**Setite** = Nickname for the Followers of Set Clan, of which the Serpents of the Light are an off-shoot.

**_Changes _****_I _****_made _****_to _****_White _****_Wolf _****_Universe _****_canon _****_to _****_make _****_this _****_fic _****_work:_**

In this fanfic, I have made the Lamia bloodline not extinct (as it is in the actual White Wolf Universe), but on the verge of being so. There is only one left in the world, and she went missing after Embracing Bellatrix Lestrange.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**16 July, 2001**_

A little more than a month had passed since she'd begun studying the zombie virus, and although there had been great strides in understanding what the plague was – definitely as she'd suspected all along: a variant hybrid of the Samedi-Lamia curses - she had yet to start on actually trying to find a way to kill it. Ideas – magical as well as Muggle - came to her head, but would need to be tested. To accomplish that, she'd need more zombie flesh and perhaps even a live zombie or three.

During this time, if Hermione wasn't to be found in the labs, she was usually reading one of the source material books on viruses and immunology in the library. Occasionally, she'd poke her head up for meals, and of course, she took care of her daily bathing and toilet needs, but for the most, she was in research mode. Not much could be done to jerk her out of that frame of mind or her dedicated schedule to the project, especially knowing a doomsday clock was slowly ticking away at the precious seconds of their lives.

Draco didn't take her distance well. As a Toreador Vampire who had just claimed his mate, he needed to reaffirm a constant sexual connection with her. It seemed an instinctual drive, and she could tell that he was having difficulty restraining that need.

They'd had to compromise: he had agreed to let her work all night long undisturbed, and she had agreed that she would then sleep a full eight hours to recover during the day, and upon waking, allow her lover to have her for at least an hour, maybe two to himself. They always had sex then, to reaffirm their bond, and he took blood from her during mating as well, although it was very little, as he didn't want to exhaust her.

For a short while - two weeks or so - that routine had worked rather well for them.

Soon, however, a new problem cropped up: Draco was slowly beginning to die - as in, the final death. Her Vampire lover needed more blood than what she could provide. He'd argued that it was enough, but the dark circles under his eyes and his increasingly paling complexion contradicted him. She'd finally forced the issue a week ago in a knock-down, drag-out shouting match, and he had relented to find an alternative blood supply.

Now he was taking most of his blood needs from the other women in the house - all except Patricia (who was absolutely terrified of the idea - she didn't even like Warrington, her Master, feeding from her - so no one pushed) and Eleanor (who mentally and physically could give no more, being of weak constitution and fragile heart to start). The other Vamps had all agreed to a feeding schedule, though, so that no one woman was ever too drained to serve her Master, but each woman was also required to provide blood for Malfoy.

Secretly, Hermione hated the whole thing. It didn't seem to matter to her green-eyed, covetous heart that he wasn't directly taking sustenance from any woman's throat or wrist, drinking from a cup they'd bled into instead, but still, the thought of another woman's fluids inside of his veins, pumping his heart, was driving her spare. She'd always known that she'd had a bit of a jealous streak, but never had it been this possessive before. She blamed it on the Vampire magic of their mating. Their bonding had slowly, but surely worked its way into her heart over the past month, and now she considered Draco Malfoy _hers_.

At least some good had come from all of them working together as a family-type unit (a twisted one, but needs must when the Devil drives): most of the men had started to treat the other women in the house with respect. Some of them had even begun having romantic relationships.

Draco had been the trend-setter. He'd brought Hermione before his colleagues the day after he'd removed her collar and announced her as his mate. He'd then followed that up with a demand that they all treat her with the deference and courtesy expected to be given to the Lady of Malfoy Manor. In effect, he'd made it clear that even without a ceremony, he considered her his wife now.

It's funny how peer pressure has a way of changing people's minds.

Two days later, Goyle had gone to Pucey and requested that they trade servants. Ambivalent on the whole subject of who serviced him, Adrian had easily agreed. That swap turned out to have been in everyone's best interest as very quickly thereafter, Sage and Goyle had became passionate lovers, while Frobisher had managed to find in Adrian a compatible soul to help him tame his darker nature. Apparently, Vicky was into games of dominance and submission just as much as her new Master. Neither woman wore a collar or lived in the servants' quarters any longer, residing in the rooms of their partners instead.

Blaise was the next to tumble off the cliff of committed bachelorhood into the stormy seas of monogamy. Somewhere between Goyle and Pucey's submission to Cupid's arrow, Zabini had begun to openly romance Abigail. His slave, however, turned out to be a better player at Giovanni mind games than the Vampire of said Clan, and her refusal to accept his earnest tokens of apology and interest had only fueled his desire to have her. The clever girl should have been sorted into Slytherin! Now, on nights when he wasn't out on a raid for supplies or wasn't helping Hermione in the labs or in the library doing research, he could be found in the company of Abby, walking the vast property's grounds and holding hands, or shagging her outside on the lawn or in the gardens, under the moonlight.

Theodore and Felicity had an amicable, fun relationship. It didn't seem to be a very deep connection, but they were fast becoming friends. Twice Hermione had caught them shagging out in the open – once in the Music Room on the piano bench and once against a wall in the upstairs hallway. They certainly seemed to enjoy each other, regardless of emotional entanglements. Perhaps something would grow from that.

Lucian and Peregrine were taking great pleasure in Mafalda and Latisha – sometimes together, at the same time – but none of the four were particularly enamored of having anything outside of a sexual relationship with each other. It was, as Randall put it, "a free-for-all, no holds barred fuck fest" that they had going and that was the extent of it. It was a solid bet that the women would be let go (and they would gladly fly the coop) in favour of new servants, if any were ever brought to the Manor. Until such a time, however, they were living up the sex – usually to the tune of banging headboards and screeching wails of pleasure.

Not everyone was as happily-ever-after, however.

Warrington was totally disconnected emotionally from Patricia, and she from him. He used her for sex and blood and his Thaumaturgical experiments whenever the whim struck, and she would find the nearest shower afterwards to scrub up until her skin was pink. Other than that, they avoided each other like the… well, like the plague. More troubling than that, however, was Patti's growing resentment of Cris, which grew day by day. Hermione was worried about that eventual blow-up, and informed Draco so he could keep an eye out on the Vampire, just in case.

Eleanor and Evan suffered the worst of the curse of Vampirism, however. They were one of those star-crossed couples you read about in Shakespearean tragedies. They were the angst-ridden ones you root for to overcome the impossible odds, yet secretly know in your heart probably won't - that they are, in fact, most likely destined for a very bad ending. Still, you can't help but want them to win and hold out hope.

It was clear by now that Ellie loved Rosier, but hated his Ravnos curse, which he couldn't at all control and which required he rape and beat his victim every time he drank from them. Evan was a man running from _everything_ – from that monstrous side of himself, as well as from Ellie's feelings, not to mention his own for her. When he had to drink from her, he now did so only after she'd emptied blood into a cup for him. He further required that he be chained to a wall in the dungeons, located just down the hall from the new labs, and for another Vampire to be present to prevent him from breaking out and hurting his servant as she pressed the cup to his mouth.

As soon as her blood passed his lips, his struggles would begin and he'd lose himself in the frenzy of the Ravnos curse. He would then begin screaming for physical release, because the pain would be agonizing for him, and Ellie would get on her knees and take him in hand or mouth to relieve him. Once he ejaculated enough to sate the curse (usually two to three times, as Ravnos were intensely sexual beings), he'd be freed of it… until the next time he needed to feed again. Branstone would cry the entire time.

Every time he was released from his shackles, he would go to her, hug and kiss her and apologize, and then he'd leave the Manor, volunteering to go outside the wards to run errands, purposefully putting himself into the line of fire. The man had a clear death wish.

Hermione had stopped her lab work for two hours just this evening after she'd heard the commotion down the hall and went to investigate. Once Evan had fled past her and out of the dungeon, shame and remorse carved into his features, and Goyle had silently followed him out, Hermione watched as Abigail had taken Ellie into her arms and let the girl have a good, long cry. After she'd calmed a bit, the three women had had an important chat that Hermione had been able to contribute to – one that changed a very unhappy situation to one of hope.

"_You'll need to be stronger for him. His guilt over making you constantly cry is driving him away. You two need to be working on a solution to this problem, not driving a bigger wedge between you." _

"_Hermione's right, Ellie. He's suffering as much as you are because… I think he's in love with you. In fact, I'm quite sure of it."_

"_You're right, of course. I need to… I need to stop crying."_

"_You need to stop being a victim to his Vampire curse – that goes for the both of you."_

"_What do you suggest, Granger? He can't touch her without chains if the curse isn't sated."_

"_So, leave the chains on and sate him how you have been. After the curse has set him free for the night, keep them on just in case, and be together however you want or need."_

"_Shites and shamrocks, why didn't I think of that before? Ellie, this is the perfect solution to your problem!"_

"_Start slow – just lie or sit next to him and spend the night talking. Eventually, work up to kissing, then more. You'd have to take the lead on that, Branstone, as his hands will be tied, but… it could work, I think."_

"_I… I don't know what to do. Evan was my first. He's been my only."_

"_Ahhh, well, step into my parlour little fly, and listen to this old spider give you an education in seducing a man…"_

"_I'm going to get back to work. You two have fun!"_

"_Bye, Hermione, and thank you!" _

She'd returned to her research after that.

At dawn, Draco appeared to assure she stopped, helped her to clean up the lab, and then escorted her to bed. He undressed her and tucked her in, spooning in behind her as they both liked. She fell asleep to the sound of his light snoring and his warm arms around her.

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**23 **__**August,**__**2001**_

Hermione crossed off "wormwood" from the list before her and threw down her Muggle pen in disgust. In the last month, she'd tried every derivative of wizarding apothecary ingredient known to no avail. Her last batch of Petri dish tests was negative.

That left her with trying combinations next. There were literally millions she could come up with, and she didn't have enough fresh zombie flesh left to test with. Someone would have to go out tonight and risk all again to get her more. She also needed fresh batteries for the microscope.

Cleaning up her station and her biohazard suit, assuring everything was clean before stepping out, she headed for the library, which had become the preferred area to hang-out in the evenings. This was mostly because she'd put them all – Vampire and servant alike - on a rotating schedule to read up on various books in the Malfoy library that she chose for them which could provide a breakthrough clue.

It was two o'clock in the morning when she came in. Draco, Blaise, Abigail and Patricia were there, each reading one of her required texts and taking notes that could be helpful. "I'm done testing every ingredient known to the wizarding world – all negatives. I'm going to try combinations of ingredients next. But, I need fresh zombie parts."

"Again?" Zabini queried, surprised. "We just got you-"

"They're two days old and rotting already," she cut him off. "It has to be fresh."

Patricia threw her quill down. "I don't see why we just don't wait them all out. You said they rot into goo within fourteen days if they don't get fresh blood. There can't be that many people left out there for them to feed from. Eventually, they'll just… drop off, won't they?"

Hermione shook her head. "It's an issue of population dynamics versus the basic reproductive rate of the virus. There were close to fifty-nine million Muggles in Great Britain at the start of this year, give or take. Wizards stood around three-thousand. From everyone's reports on what they knew about the zombie virus spread, including reports that had been heard on the WWN before it went off-air, the plague seemed to spread at a ratio of about one to five - meaning one infected zombie, on average, bit five healthy people a day and infected them. Those infected went on to bite five a piece of their own per day, and so on. At that rate, I calculated that as of June, half the country had been infected. Even with many of them evacuated, not everyone left." She made a circling gesture to include their group in that statistic. "That's still around twenty-five million humans. _And_ we have no idea if the virus can cross species to other animals, magical creatures or Beings. Who knows how many of those live here – millions more, maybe. If we included them in the infection rate…" She shook her head and shrugged. "It could be another year before all of the infected finally run out of blood to feed on and fall over dead – and that's assuming that they're land-locked and can't walk on the bottom of the ocean or fly away and move from continent to continent. The Muggles aren't willing to wait that long, for fear the disease will get off the Isles. They gave us time to work on a cure from the wizarding angle. They're doing so from the Muggle one. But, we only have three months left as of September first. Waiting isn't an option."

"So, let's leave," Stimpson insisted. "Give us some wands and let us go!"

Hermione's concerned gaze met Draco's. They'd discussed this scenario – people panicking, wanting to leave before the end. They argued over it a lot the last few weeks. They'd also discussed Patricia's mounting hatred for Warrington, and her desire to leave him, and how that issue would eventually be aired. It seemed that tonight, there would be two birds killed with one stone as both issues would be forced to the surface.

"No," he resolutely stated, "there will be no leaving."

Patricia made her feet and slammed shut the book she'd been reading. "And what right do you have to hold any of us here? You give us clothes and food and a bed, but you're no different from the Azkaban guards. No, you're worse! You're enslaving us against our will – using Vampire magic to make us want to be here, stealing our souls!"

"Sit down, Stimpson," Malfoy instructed, his tone rational, even. "Keep reading."

She blinked and looked away, and Hermione knew in an instant that she'd just broken his mesmerizing stare and resisted his command given with the use of his Vampire magic. Such a thing shouldn't have been possible.

"You can't command me," she shouted, running for the exit.

Draco caught her before she could touch the door handle. "Heed me," he growled, angered that she'd been able to resist the Toreador abilities of Presence, which allowed him to Entrance and Awe others with his voice and aura.

Stimpson shook her head and shut her eyes, yanking on her arm. "Let go! You can't force me!"

A thought occurred to Hermione that settled like lead in her belly. "She mentioned that Warrington was conducting blood magic through her and gaining power that way."

Blaise was suddenly at his friend's side. "Look at me," he commanded, using the Giovanni ability to Dominate their foes. He could Command and Entrance, and even make people forget selective memories if he wanted.

Patricia fought it, but it was useless. She looked up into Zabini's face and was his the moment their eyes met. _"__Legilimens,__"_ he whispered, using his Wizarding magic in combination with his Vampire talents.

The witch jerked back as if slapped as he entered her mind and read her memories. It took only seconds before he had gotten what he wanted and let her go. He began swearing up a storm. "We need to do something about him – immediately," he warned. "He's been practicing Biothaumaturgy since his Embrace to try to figure out how to conquer and control living and dead flesh."

"Why?" Hermione asked. "What could he possibly-" She stopped as a frightening thought struck and turned her attention to her lover. "When did he first approach you about joining your little gang here once Voldemort was gone?"

Malfoy and Zabini traded a look. "He was the one who suggested it, actually - that we gather together and find a place to hold up outside the school until the plague ran its course. That was just before we abandoned Hogwarts."

Her heart was beating like a little bird under her ribs. "You need to capture him and get into his memories. I think he's responsible for all of this."

Draco frowned. "I thought you said my aunt and uncle were responsible for all of this."

I shook my head. "They are, but… I think Warrington might be Patient Zero."

_"WHAT?"_

"Hurry, find him and bring him to the dungeons – the one with chains that we used to tie up Evan," she instructed. "And be careful – don't let him bite or scratch you. Stun him and bind his mouth and hands before you carry him anywhere!"

**X~~~~~X**

She held tightly to her notes – the same ones she'd been holding the night she went to see Malfoy and he'd distracted her with his mating of her – and looked at the limp figure chained to the wall. Tied up in a nearby chair was Patricia. Neither was going any place soon.

"_Ennervate,__"_ she cast on the inert Vampire, and instantly, he woke up.

When he realized his predicament, he snarled at her and the rest of the house, all of whom were down there out of curiosity. The other women were in the hallway, trying to see in and listening to the proceedings with strained ears, while the Vampires took up the bulk of the room next to and surrounding her. Everyone was circumspect, wary, and intently focused. Tremere Vampires were considered with suspicion and typically handled with care by the other Clans because they had powers that no other Kindred had. It seemed Warrington was no exception.

She glanced at her notes again, recognizing the damning passages in the writing. It all fit together now, like a completed puzzle. She only needed to glue and frame it.

"It's you, isn't it? You're Patient Zero – the transmitter of the zombie plague."

Cris' eyes narrowed and he sneered at her, but didn't speak.

She lifted the notes that Lucian Bole had made and began reading aloud:

**_Usually they paired me with Perrie when we were sent to check on the Bloodlets, but that day, I went with Cris. We'd been mates since first year at school, but after his Embrace, we weren't as close. He'd become Tremere, and my Sire had warned me off of 'em. Said I couldn't ever trust a single one of them. He called them 'the Usurpers'._**

She skimmed down the page and picked up at another passage:

**_We'd gone to check on the Lestranges. Our Lord wanted to make sure they were doing well – adjusting to their new powers and shite, you know? The rumour going about was that they were really powerful – more than the rest of us, and the Dark Lord kept 'em separate so they wouldn't hurt anyone else. They were stashed in their own wing of warded rooms on the ground floor – Classrooms Ten and Eleven. I heard a Centaur actually taught Divination there one year, but that was after I'd graduated. _**

**_Bellatrix was gorgeous. I'd always hated her before – thought she was the ugliest bint I'd ever seen, true, but… WOW! She'd changed. I wanted to fuck her the minute I saw her, but Cris warned me off. He said her bite would poison me and make my body start to rot. He went to check on Rodolphus while I tossed the container of blood at Bella like we were supposed to. Once she started drinking, I left. No chick is worth your dick falling off._**

**_The whole trip only took a few minutes. As soon as Warrington came out, we tailed it fast through the wards and were out of there._ **

She stopped reading and looked at the prisoner again. "What did you do to Rodolphus Lestrange that night?" she demanded. "Did you taint him with Thaumaturgy?"

Cris sniffed in disdain. "No. My skill wasn't that good then. It took time and practice."

She narrowed her eyes. "It would take more than that to get where you are now. How did you get so powerful in so short a time?"

He laughed and it sounded a touch mad. "It's easy to drain the weak and take their strength."

The air in the room suddenly thickened with a vibrating thread of violence to go along with the already present tension. Incredulity passed over every Vampire in the room. They all knew what he was hinting at.

"Who… who did you diablerize? Whose powers and soul did you eat?" she asked, astounded by his blasphemy.

He met her gaze, and his light green eyes bled very slowly to crimson red. "All of the women he turned – Parkinson, the Greengrass girls – all of them."

"No wonder all of the pureblood witches are gone," Mafalda spoke from the back, at the doorway. "You ate them all, you fucking lunatic!"

Cris didn't respond, but his smirk said it all.

"Defence Against the Dark Arts was your strength in school, I take it?"

He was positively gloating. "Oh, absolutely. It was Professors Quirrell and Lockhart that particularly started me on the path of researching Vampires." His face became quite mocking as he spilled his tale. "Amazing what you can find out if you have access. I was particularly interested in the tale of Giovanni" – his eyes swung to Zabini – "and how he killed his Antediluvian progenitor, Cappadocius, by draining him dry and swallowing his soul. He did the same to Lamia, the head of that blood lineage. It made him powerful beyond reckoning."

"You did all of this for power?" Hermione asked, shaking her head. "Did you learn nothing from Voldemort's mistakes?"

"I learned _everything_ from his mistakes," he corrected her. "He didn't try to understand Vampirism at its core. He just wanted to manipulate it to get what he wanted as quickly as possible. He was like one of those Muggle scientists who run about playing God with viruses without spending the twenty years cutting them open and understanding how and why they work. When you're that careless, you miss the point… and accidents happen."

"Accidents," Hermione growled. "Is that what the zombie plague is to you – an _accident_?"

"Well, of course it was, you daft bint!" he shouted at her and Draco took a step forward. Cris seemed unconcerned, his whole focus on her. "Did you think I wanted Rodolphus to take a chunk out of me? It hurt like fucking hell, and I almost died from it. If I hadn't drained Bellatrix, I'd be dead by now."

She rustled her papers again and started reading from Theodore Nott's testimony:

**_They found Bellatrix dead in her room about a week before the plague struck in the castle, if I recall the timeline correctly. Rodolphus, her husband, was gone the next night. Both of them had been mummified, like every drop of blood had been sucked out of them. Voldemort's top blew. He ordered Lucius Malfoy, my father, and Cris Warrington's dad to find out what had happened._**

**_The next night, Warrington's father was ill, as was my father and Lucius Malfoy. They couldn't get out of bed, and they were vomiting their guts out until they bled. It only took another day or so and they were all three dead._**

**_The night after that, all of the girls that had been made Kine were missing. No one knew where they'd gone. Their rooms were open, but they just weren't there or anywhere on the property. Since Voldemort changed the wards around the school to prevent any escape without his knowledge, not just entry from outsiders, he was in a right snit of not knowing._**

She switched papers to read from Evan Rosier's account:

**_Things were really confusing after the Senior Malfoy, Warrington and Nott's deaths. Voldemort was busy punishing everyone he could get his hands on, blaming them for things going out of control, for the missing women and the mysterious illness that had taken three of his top advisors. _**

**_Somewhere in the middle of that, other people started getting the same illness. Snatchers started dropping like flies – it passed very quickly. It would take them a day or two to die. Another two days, and that's when we'd started seeing those that had previously died from the illness shuffling around the castle. They'd come back to life, like Inferi, and they bit people, sucking at their blood until they were sated. The people bit would become ill, die, come back to life, and start the cycle over again. _**

**_Trapped as we all were by the wards Voldemort had set to keep us in the castle, and by his unwillingness to let any of us leave because he wanted answers and someone to blame, a group of us –Zabini, Malfoy, Nott, Bole, Derrick, Warrington, Pucey, Goyle, and me - decided it was time to hide out in the Room of Requirement to avoid both the disease and the Dark Lord, who seemed to be going more and more insane as the days passed._**

**_Two days later, as we were all slowly starving to death from lack of blood, it was Warrington who found the portrait that connected the Room of Requirement to the Hog's Head Inn in Hogsmeade. That was our ticket out. We snatched a few women in Hogsmeade so we could feed, and escaped to Malfoy's home to hold up and hope that the Dark Lord wouldn't come for us for betraying him._**

"So, let me see if I get this timeline and the facts right – correct me if I'm wrong," she charged Warrington.

He gave her a mocking nod.

"You were made Tremere-"

"I _volunteered_ to be made Tremere," he amended her assumption immediately. "Of all the Clans, they interested me the most with their blood magic, which was stronger than a wizard's dark magic."

"Right," she stated, elongating the word to illustrate her understanding of his insane judgment.

"Don't knock it 'till you try it, pet."

She ignored his intentional provoking. "You got your wish and were turned Tremere. You have a fixation on death – which explains your obsession with Vampires when you were younger, and the Tremere have magic that deals in the study of death. They're the only major Clan remaining who actually studies such things, now that the Cappadocian Clan was made all but extinct. Specifically, you're interest is in Biothaumaturgy - the scientific study of dead organisms, using blood magic to repair and resurrect them. It's a discipline of the Tremere Vampire, hence the reason you chose to become Tremere to begin with. As to the virus…"

She began pacing back and forth in the limited space remaining to her – a nervous habit she indulged when piecing together facts. The act of moving about seemed to help her concentration and aid in her logical thought process.

"You went to visit the Lestranges with Bole the night he wrote about in his statement, and you were immediately drawn to the fact that Rodolphus was a Semedi Vampire – a blood lineage of the Cappadocian Clan, all of whom are, basically, walking and talking zombies. Lestrange's corpse-like appearance and continually rotting body must have fascinated you to no end. But, you were incautious and got too close to Rodolphus. You were bringing him his daily blood supply, so he was hungry and hadn't eaten then, and he bit you."

"Go on," he prompted her, nodding.

"You hid the bite, but realized very soon that it wasn't healing," she postulated. "Samedi are known for their bites being either particularly painful and/or for not healing well."

"It was rotting me, actually," he confirmed for her. "I was having trouble keeping my chest from liquefying. Blood seemed to work to reverse the damage, but I needed a lot of it. I drained the Muggle girl they sent to me to see to my needs. Actually, I diablerized her, but I didn't mean to at that time. I didn't even really know what I'd done until she was a dried up husk on my floor. I knew I felt stronger, more powerful after, though. She was human, not Vamp, but her soul… it tasted good in me." His eyes glassed over for a moment, and Hermione knew his mind was a million miles away, reliving that day and those feelings. "It was like heat and new strength – like being born, I guess. Different from anything I'd felt since I was Embraced."

"So, you decided to go about diablerizing Bellatrix next."

He blinked and snapped back into the present, nodding.

"Awfully ambitious of you, considering she was a Lamia."

Warrington grinned at her, and there was a definite psychosis reflected in the spark of his eyes. "But it was the perfect place to start, wasn't it? I'd been bitten by a Cappadocian off-shoot and was rotting. What would happen if I was bitten by a Lamia, too? What would change if I diablerized them both?"

Hermione stared at him. "You're mad."

His grin grew. "How can one understand death otherwise?"

"So, you let her bite you, and then you diablerized her," she continued, stepping closer to Draco, feeling suddenly very chilled by the insanity of Warrington's plan. "And your strength grew."

He nodded. "Enough to fight off both plagues longer than if I'd drank from a human. My body was changing the Samedi curse, adding the element of the Lamia curse to it."

"Lamia bites are poison. They're fatal, especially to men… but you already knew that," she pointed out the obvious. "You warned Bole about it. And you knew she was Lamia because of her drastic change in appearance. Only the Lamia lineage can change a woman who is ugly into one of striking beauty."

"They taste really good, too," Cris taunted. "Yum, yum!"

"So, she bit you, and her curse – a blood infection that rots its victims over a matter of days - somehow combined with the Samedi bite's infection and mutated," she compiled the facts quickly now, wanting to get to the bottom line soon, as this was dragging on much too long. "You were able to control this new mutated curse just barely by diablerizing Vampires - stealing their blood and powers and using them to keep the infection in check within your body. You killed her, and the next night you killed Rodolphus, and the night after that, you bit your own father, Lucius Malfoy and Donovon Nott. Why didn't you just diablerize them, too? They were wizards, but their blood and magic would have been a good addition to your power base."

"I bit my father," he confirmed, "but not the other two. He did that after, as the virus compelled him to."

Her brows lowered in confusion. "Why?"

His brows raised in amusement. "I told my father I needed blood, because my servant girl hadn't been replaced yet. He was ever the good patrician and offered me his wrist without question."

"Never suspecting you'd infect him," Zabini tsked in disgust.

Cris snickered. "Don't look at me like that, Giovanni. Disloyalty to family for personal ambition is at the heart of your Clan's very existence. Your primogenitor diablerized Cappadocius _and_ Lamia - his Sire and his blood sister."

"You bit your father, and he got sick – what? Almost immediately?" she asked.

Warrington nodded. "Ravaged him fast – within minutes, he started sweating and had a fever. There was no time to diablerize him – and yes, I did consider it. Malfoy and Nott took him out of my rooms between them before it could be done, though. I heard them say they were going to take him back to his room for a lie-in, thinking he was just weak from the loss of blood. He bit them sometime between my room and his."

"Infecting them, too," Hermione murmured and shook her head in disgust. "Did you know your bite would do that?"

Cris' eyes shut down all emotion like a light switch, and his face went instantly blank. "What do you think?"

"No, I don't think you knew, but I think you definitely _wanted_ to know," she asserted, going with her gut instinct. "I think you purposefully infected him to find out what would happen to the virus you'd changed in your body if it were passed on to someone else. And after that, when your father died and you had your answer – that is, that the virus had mutated and taken on the worst attributes of both curses - you panicked. Diablerizing all of the Bloodlet pureblood females in the castle was your solution to building up your immunity against the virus, just in case it mutated within you again, and the next time, overpowered you. That about right?"

Warrington nodded with excitement, and she knew he was reliving those moments in his head, relishing the clever destruction he'd wrought. His eyes were gleaming, red fire pits of demonic amusement.

"And I suppose you got rid of those women's desiccated bodies to prevent Voldemort from finding out that it was you doing the killing of his people?"

He shrugged and his chains rattled. "I had to throw him off the scent. He began going nutters after that, trying to figure out where they'd gone and why they'd abandoned him. And by then, my father, Malfoy's and Nott's had all died. Soon after, they'd gotten up out of their graves and were walking around infecting others. The mysteries and growing chaos distracted him. He never had time to backtrack, because he was too busy fighting fires."

"How exactly did diablerizing all those Kindred stop the mutated virus from killing you, scientifically speaking?" she asked, curious to know how he'd managed to dominate such a deadly organism.

"It gave me the magical power I needed to perform Biothaumaturgy on myself – altering my body just enough so that the virus no longer attacked me," he proudly boasted.

"But you're a carrier nonetheless," she guessed, "and you still need to keep up the blood drinking so you can regularly perform Biothaumaturgy on yourself to keep the virus from mutating again inside of you."

He nodded. "The cost of science and of staying alive."

She glanced at Patricia across the room, still unconscious in the chair they'd tied her to. "You've bitten her. She's infected."

"Sad for her, but true."

The girl's coughing now made sense. Her body was fighting off the infection. But she had to have had help to do so… "She said you've been performing Thaumaturgy on her the whole time she's been here," Hermione recalled. "Why? So you can now take the time to study how the virus works outside of your body on others?"

His grin was white, and sharp. "Precisely."

"She's your living guinea pig," Malfoy hissed in revulsion. "You've let a plague carrier into my house, after taking an oath to me!"

"_I__'__m_ the _ultimate_ plague carrier," Warrington pointed out, entertained by Draco's vehemence. "And _you_ let me in. The fault is yours for not being more thorough in checking your guests over before opening doors to them. Besides, I've kept up my end of the bargain – I haven't actually caused you any harm yet, have I, Malfoy?"

Hermione clasped Draco's hand in hers to keep him from exploding. His temper was riled and Warrington was jerking his chain hard. Not a good combination. "What are you after?" she asked the prisoner, sensing there was more to it than Cris was telling. "Why not just run when you had the chance after escaping Voldemort? You'd changed the virus and were stable, relatively speaking. Why not just go on the Lam, drink from blood banks to avoid spreading the disease, and live hidden?"

The former Slytherin Quidditch Chaser stared long and hard at her, as if sensing she was onto his game. "You're a smart bird. You figure it out."

Gears turned over and over in her head. Words he'd spoken earlier came back at her. She leapt to make a connection. "Power interests you. Power over death…" A thought occurred and shocked her to the soles of her feet. "You're looking to do what Voldemort was attempting: find a way to dominate the Vampire Clans, and through them, everyone else. Only… he was doing it wrong, you said. He didn't understand why Vampirism actually works." She swallowed in nervous trepidation, finally understanding. "But you do now that you've figured out how this virus works - through your little experiments on Patti, and on the animals and insects in the garden that she was telling us about. You know how and why Vampires die, don't you? And you're going to use the knowledge – and the threat of the virus - to crown yourself King of the World."

Cris licked his lips and gave her a sultry smile. "I like you, Granger. What say you ditch prissy boy here," he jerked his head at Malfoy, "and come be my Queen."

Draco's hand came around her waist and pulled her tight against him, his chest pressing to her back in a solid line. He growled and it was an angry cat-like noise. "She's _mine_."

Warrington laughed, and it was sad to say that he was quite handsome with such an expression on his face. Too bad he was so black hearted. "I regret not taking her before you bonded to her, but I was a bit too preoccupied then to make the effort. She won't want me now anyway, will you, pet? The idea repulses you, doesn't it – any man other than Draco touching you? I wonder if you truly understand what he's done to you, though."

"What do you mean-?" she asked, but Draco's warning growl grew louder and drowned her out.

Zabini put a calming hand on her lover's shoulder. "He's trying to provoke you into getting close. He wants to bite and infect you."

Cris snarled at Blaise for thwarting his plans and jerked his chains, trying to break free of them in a lunge. The chains held, but the sound of metal bending was clearly audible.

Goyle stepped in front of Draco and Hermione. His hands had morphed into those of an animal's – long claws as sharp and razors, digits elongated by an extra knuckle. He snarled and she knew he was baring fangs at their enemy.

In a quick move, she angled around Greg's big body and pointed her wand at Warrington. "I think you've done enough damage in one lifetime. _Petrificus __Totalus._"

Warrington froze in his chains, but his scarlet-coloured eyes looked at them all with undisguised malice.

"Well," she stated, taking a deep breath. "We have our answers to how, when, where and why, as well as our live virus carriers to test from. No, even better than that: we have Patient Zero. I think it's very possible now to come up with a cure, especially since Bonzo here seems to have figured out a way to make the disease inert. If he could do that, we can definitely figure out a way to destroy it."

"Thank Godric for that," Abigail rooted from the entrance. "Maybe Christmas this year won't suck after all."

No one laughed. The truth of the evil that had been lying in the same house with them for months, that had fooled them all, was too unsettling.

* * *

_**TO BE CONTINUED…**_


	5. Chapter 5

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**13 November, 2001**_

Hermione was exhausted by the time she'd managed to pull her weary body up the stairs from the lab and into the library. She entered to find everyone there.

In the months following Warrington's exposed betrayal, they'd all pulled together to research every potions formulae or concoction known to wizarding man, sitting here night after night to research through books that hadn't seen the light of day in centuries (many of them had been stolen from the shelves of the Headmaster's office in Hogwarts, and others from the abandoned Ministry Departments – especially those of the Unspeakables - on nighttime raids). They'd banded together as a family in this desperate effort, ignoring Vampire Clan, former House affiliation and blood purity issues, to offer her any suggestions to aid in finding the winning combination of ingredients. As test after test failed to find a cure and their deadline fast approached, their efforts had doubled.

Tonight, she could finally tell them to stop.

Every eye was on her as she took a deep breath and let it out. She nodded as she locked gazes with her lover, and her voice was rough, laced with the fatigue that comes with no sleep for days on end. "We have our cure."

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**European Ministry's Temporary Headquarters – Paris, France**_

_**4 December, 2001**_

Hermione and Draco were Side-Along Apparated by Mopsy to Paris to meet with the Ministry and Muggle world leaders to present their cure.

With her consent, they'd tested it on Patricia, a living victim, and it had worked. They then tested it on several infected humans. What they found was that those who were already in the first stage of the virus – that was, those who were bitten, but hadn't yet died – were cured of the plague and immune to catching it thereafter. Those in stage two – the victims that had succumbed to the disease and died, and were reanimated as zombies – fell over in final death within minutes of being exposed to the cure (which had been dried up into a powder and dispersed by pushing air behind it). It required a good dose directly in the face to do the job, but it was one-hundred percent effective.

The magic combination: the bile of flesh-eating slugs combined with garlic and the mold of an orange.

"You're joking," the British Muggle Prime Minister skeptically stated. "You're telling us that slugs, a common household spice, and penicillin kills zombies?"

Lecture time! This truly was the best part of Hermione's job!

She launched into a long-winded explanation of how the bile of the magical flesh-eating slugs was responsible for the dissolving and digestion of any type of fleshy material, from plant life to animal life, rotting or infected. She then described how the slug used its radula – its rough tongue that had rows of tiny teeth – to scrape away at the dissolved flesh for ingestion. "By nature, magical flesh-eating slugs are at the top of the evolutionary ladder because they've adapted to be able to survive on just about anything," she stated. "They're alongside reptiles for having the most advanced immune systems on the planet. They'd have to be, as they're omnivorous, to include the cannibalistic eating of other slugs, as well as eating carrion. They've also evolved a thicker skin coating to prevent drying out – something their non-magical relatives have yet to master. Their only real weakness is Flesh-Eating Slug Repellent, which contains Metaldehyde – the poison contained in most Muggle slug pesticides. Basically, not much can kill these little blighters, and their bile is powerful enough to dissolve and eat anything in its path, just about – including the zombie virus."

She spoke next of the healing properties of garlic, as used by the Greek and Roman armies for centuries. "Even back in ancient days, its properties to heal were known, though not well understood. There were rumours that garlic was heavily used during the Black Death epidemic of 1347 to 1353. When we went back and read the wizarding history of that same event, it seems that garlic was, in fact, used a key ingredient in remedies to prevent the spread of the disease. What they didn't know, but what we do now in our modern era, is that garlic boosts a person's natural immunity by strengthening white blood cells, which fight off infection. That's how it indirectly keeps disease at bay."

So she could connect the dots, she went into a discourse about Vampire biology, as much as she had learned from Cris Warrington over the past few months. "The fact that Vampires, in general, find the smell of garlic abhorrent tell us that there is something in the plant's chemical properties that does not agree with their systems. When we experimented, we discovered that the zombie plague – a result of Vampire blood curses co-mingling – was affected by the amount of allicin – a chemical produced in garlic. Allicin is an allergen to most Vampires because it attacks their immune system, rather than boosts it, because they're undead. In short, the Vampire-zombie virus physically retreated when in the presence of allicin under the microscope."

Taking a deep breath, she embarked upon the final part of this journey in describing how the vaccine was developed from all three of the ingredients they'd discovered as key to solving this particular enigma. "What we did, in effect, was engineer a super zombie virus killer. We did that by combining allicin with penicillin – a known antibiotic that comes from the mold on an orange rind – which strengthened the allicin's ability to act as an immune booster. We then worked through much trial-and-error to get the bile of a flesh-eating slug to bond to the allicin, rather than attempt to eat it. It required magic – Biothaumaturgy, specifically - to accomplish that part. We then introduced a dead version of the zombie virus – killed using formalin, a formaldehyde and water solution, per standard Muggle practice - and got _that_ to bond on the outside of the slug bile, which was covering the allicin-penicillin compound. Again, that required Biothaumaturgy. We then delivered the vaccine through a dried resin-based vector for the best results. Blowing it directly into the face of a zombie, so it would run up the nostril cavities, into the tear ducts and into the mouth guaranteed absorption. Within minutes, stage two zombies fell over, finally dead, and stage one victims began to fight off the infection. Their complete return to health occurred over a period of two to three days under twenty-four hour strict bed rest."

"_Voila!_" she concluded with little fanfare. "A cure accomplished using wizarding, Vampire and Muggle techniques and teamwork."

After that discussion, it came down to how much vaccine could be replicated and how long it would take. Thanks to the Geminio Spell, she explained to them that it was possible to make as much vaccine as they needed in seconds. It could be distributed by airplane dump runs, much the same as pesticides used to be dropped upon crops. Teams of military-trained personnel, dressed in biohazard suits, could lure out zombies from indoor spaces and spray the vaccine directly into their faces using hoses on jury-rigged fire trucks or extinguishers. The whole clean up could happen in sixty days, maybe less, depending on how many people they put on the project. The Ministry volunteered the Aurors and Hit Wizards as guard protection to ensure the Muggle military teams were safe.

Nuclear holocaust had been averted. Everyone was optimistic that life could return to Great Britain by next year and resume.

The leader of Clan Toreador in Europe approached Draco that night in their hotel. A bargain was struck that he was to be the head of Toreador Vampires in Britain, now that Sanguini had died, a victim of the plague. The Clan leader – a fourteen-hundred year old Vampire - was impressed by Draco's accomplishments as a newly made Kine, and he saw the benefit of keeping a wizard-turned-Vamp of such prestige and with such powerful friends, as an ally rather than make him an enemy. He was told in no uncertain terms that he would be watched, especially as he'd maintained such close friendships with other Vampire Clan members, but he would be free to act as he wished so long as he and his allies never threatened the continent, and they obeyed the precepts set down by their Antediluvian creator ages ago. Draco easily agreed to the bargain, winning all he'd wanted from the negotiations.

The Clan leader assured he would pass the information of their meeting on to all of the other Toreador leaders in the other parts of the world at their meeting in Madrid next year. Draco made it clear that that he would be attending that meeting as the representative of Britain.

**X~~~~~~~~~~X**

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England ****& The Burrow - Ottery St. Catchpole, England**_

_**14 December, 2001**_

Voldemort's body was discovered in the ancestral Riddle House in Little Hangleton. He had died of the zombie plague, having magically tied himself up in his favorite chair to avoid moving about, and overlooking the ravaged village below where every citizen had died of the disease as well. How he contracted the plague, no one could say, but it was clear that he'd died fairly early on, as his skeleton was in a bad state of decay. Hermione speculated that he'd been bitten while at Hogwarts by an infected and fled, hoping to escape his fate – and that was why the wards around the school collapsed as they had. With no barrier to keep them in, the stage two zombies had free roaming privileges on the Scottish countryside, and stage one victims had Apparated out, fleeing the same as their Master – and thus spread the plague. The citizens of Little Hangleton had obviously become infected by somehow encountering Voldemort.

Hermione couldn't manage a smile of joy at the news, even thought the Dark Lord's death officially brought about an end to the war. A terrible chapter of wizarding history could close at long last.

She had lost the will to care.

"Are you going to continue to punish us both?" Draco asked, hands in his pockets and staring out the window of their shared bedroom into the moonlit garden below.

"I'm not trying to punish you," she whispered, feeling tears course down her cheeks. "I just can't… bear to look at you right now."

Oh, yes, during the months of his incarceration, Cris Warrington had been, much to her pleasant surprise, a fount of information on the zombie plague, on how dead and living tissue worked on a cellular level that not even Muggle science understood, and how it could be magically manipulated to be used for one's purposes (à la Biothaumaturgy). All of that had been _vital_ in developing the method of making the flesh-eating slug bile bond with the ancillin-penicillin as well as the dead virus they'd attached to it to make the vaccine. Of course, his bargain for them to obtain such pertinent information had been harsh – a punishment meant for her and Malfoy alone. They'd accepted his terms, and been terribly wounded by the deal, but in the end, they'd gotten what they needed to make the cure. All it had cost them was their hearts…

"We had no choice," he stated for the hundredth time. "We needed his knowledge, and his powers prevented us from using Legilimency or other types of memory extraction on him. There was no way to get at his information without him physically telling it to us. You know that."

Yes, they'd been through it a hundred and _one_ times. It didn't change anything.

"I'm not angry at you for his requirement that you have sex with some of the other women in front of me, or for feeding from their throats while I was forced to watch," she explained. "You were under duress, and Warrington was a sick, sadistic man. I'm just glad you finally killed him. No, I'm angry with you because you lied to me, and because I had to find out about that fact from someone like Cris. You said you wouldn't hurt me, Draco, but you have done. You've taken my choice about my future away from me by not explaining what our bonding truly meant. When Voldemort did that to you the night he threw that Toreador Vampire into your room and ordered him to Embrace you, you cursed him for it. You tried to kill yourself because of it. So, I think you should understand when I say that I… I don't think I can forgive you so easily."

He was at her feet in an instant, kneeling. Hermione shifted on the sofa, uncomfortable with him being so near her now. They hadn't touched in over two months. Yes, the distance between them was killing her a little bit more every day, but if she let him touch her, she knew she'd lose her will again. She couldn't let that happen. Too many people had taken from her throughout her life, especially the last three years.

"I'm sorry," he pleaded, eyes filled with sincere remorse and regret. "I was so afraid that if I told you what the bonding would do – that it would make you un-aging, tied to my lifeforce, and unable to have children - that you'd…"

"Deny you?" she finished for him. "If I had a choice, you thought I'd tell you to stuff it, so rather you didn't give me any choice at all. You manipulated me by seducing me and withholding all of the information so I could make an informed decision."

He lowered his head, showing her the back of his neck – the Vampire's sign of surrender, a gesture of complete vulnerability. "I'm so sorry, beloved - so incredibly sorry. Please, _please_ don't go. Don't leave me! Hermione, _please_."

Hesitantly, she reached out and touched his long, soft champagne and vanilla-coloured hair. He shuddered at the contact, and with a sob, he had his arms around her middle and his face buried in her lap. His tears stained her Muggle jeans, which she'd begun wearing months ago around the lab, and now preferred for everyday wear.

"I love you," he cried, finally giving the words their freedom. "I love you so much it hurts to be without you."

"I know," she admitted, letting her tears flow unchecked down her cheeks.

She could finally understand poor Ellie's and Evan's broken hearts. As suspected, the young witch and Rosier had not made it. Once the cure had begun to be distributed and things had been finalized with his Ravnos Clan leader (who had come to speak with him from the continent), he'd finally told her that he loved her, and then he'd set her free, taking the collar from around her neck and tossing it into the trash. He'd left with the other Vampire a beat later, refusing to turn back to answer Eleanor's pleading calls for his attention. Hermione could now relate to that kind of pain. Staying here hurt, and yet the thought of leaving here hurt even more. It was the worst kind of Catch-22.

"What can I do to fix this?" he implored. "Do you want me to" - he paused, swallowing with tight anxiety - "break the bond? Do you want me to set you free?"

She considered the offer for a few quiet moments before making her decision.

"Yes."

His chest hitched and he turned his face into her lap, taking deep, gulping breaths.

It took him long minutes to regain control. When he was finally able to, he lifted his head off of her and released his hold around her waist, resting his palms on the cushions of the sofa, instead. He wouldn't look her in the eye, instead focusing on her abdomen. He nodded once. "I… I need to touch you above your heart and to… to kiss you."

"How do you know?" she asked. As far as she knew, he'd never done this before.

He tapped the side of his head. "It's in here. Same as I knew how to bond to you to begin with. Part of the innate magic of Toreador."

She nodded and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "All right."

Slowly, he placed his left palm over her heart, and with his right, he cupped the back of her neck. Sitting up on the couch at her side, he turned her to face him. Their mouths were inches apart, and their eyes were searching each other for answers which didn't come.

It happened fast. He leaned in and latched onto her mouth, opening her up with pressure applied to the bottom of her jaw with his thumb. There was the taste of him in her mouth again, and then it grew colder through the middle of her chest, as if her heat were being stolen away. That same feeling that had broken her apart so many months ago, when they'd first made love and he'd bitten her, trading her life's fluid for a piece of his soul, overtook her again, and she sobbed. There was no accompanying orgasm this time, but instead only a deep despair – the exact opposite of the joy she had received back then.

A moment later, he'd pulled his mouth from hers, and it was done. She could feel the hollow spot in her magical aura and in her spirit that existed where once his lifeforce had resided. He paused for a few heartbeats to rest his forehead on hers. Neither of them moved nor spoke. It was a quiet moment needed to accept what had been done.

In a flash, he was up off the sofa and across the room again, staring out the window in the exact spot he'd begun the night's conversation. "Go," he offered her. "I won't stop you."

On shaky knees, Hermione made her feet, holding a tight grip on her wand. "I'm going to the Burrow. I want to check on the Weasleys, and then… I'm going to find my parents in Australia. I took their memories from them."

"Without their permission. Just like me," he cruelly pointed out, but his tone was anything but. He sounded… broken.

"Yes," she agreed, knowing he was right. Regardless of her good reasons, what she'd done to her parents – taking their choice away from them, and setting them up to live a lie - was unconscionable, and was no different than what Voldemort and his followers had done to her first, and later what Draco had done when he'd bonded her. The metaphor could be extended even further to include Warrington, and Rosier, and… "It's like you said: _everyone's_ a monster, deep down inside. Some of us are just better at hiding it."

"The wards are lowered," he informed her in a deadened voice.

"Thank you. Goodbye, Draco."

She raised her new wand, closed her eyes, and Apparated away, pretending she didn't hear him call out after her – _"No!"_ - as the thunder and the pull of the teleportation magic took her far from his side.

This was for the best, she kept telling herself as she landed on the edge of the Burrow's familiar golden field of tall marsh grass. It was time to be free. She'd been a captive for far too long - to herself, to others. She _wasn't_ dead, as she'd once believed lying on the floor of her cell in Azkaban. She was alive and she had survived the impossible: a genocidal war and a deadly plague. Now, she could enjoy the life she'd fought so hard to keep.

As she walked the familiar path towards the Weasley's front door, hoping to see at least one familiar face from her past greet her today, Hermione realized that Cris Warrington had been wrong all along in chasing the ultimate false dream. Gaining true immortality was as elusive a goal as mastering Death. Just ask the Peverell brothers.

* * *

_**TO BE CONTINUED…**_


	6. Chapter 6: Epilogue 1

**_EPILOGUE #1_**

**_Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England_**

**_2 January, 2003_**

Mopsy greeted her at the gate, at the boundaries of the property with a squeal of happiness. "Mistress is home!" With a quick pop, she appeared on the other side of the gate where Hermione stood. "Master will be so pleased! He has been so lonely without the Mistress. Mopsy knows."

The little house-elf grabbed her hand and slid them through the wards like melted butter over toast. She had forgotten that the little domestic servants had the ability, honestly, having not seen one since the last time she'd been here.

They appeared with a pop in the middle of the library.

In the middle of the day, Hermione hadn't expected anyone to be awake, perhaps except Draco. To her surprise, he wasn't awake either – he was passed out on the plush sofa.

"Mopsy will take Mistress' coat and bring tea while Mistress wakes the Master with kisses," the little elf, her first friend here at the house, kindly offered with a knowing smile that crinkled her grayish skin and brightened her eyes.

Hermione easily agreed, not wanting to make too much noise. The elf popped away with her coat and to go to the kitchen. She wouldn't be back for a bit, so Hermione glanced about, unsure where to put herself to wait. It seemed rude to sit without being invited to do so.

"Then I invite you to sit," Draco grumbled, his mercurial eyes opening with all the languid grace of a sleepy dragon's. His smirk was slow as it slid across his beautiful features. "I knew you'd come."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "After the dreams you've been throwing at me over the six months, how could I not?"

His teeth were white, his fangs deliciously sharp. "Wanna shag?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "You're unbelievable. I'm not in the house two minutes and you're already thinking about-"

He was on his feet and looming over her before she could finish the sentence. "I'm _always_ thinking about sex with you, my beauty."

The dreams had been vibrant, tangible, but she'd known they were only dreams while living half a world away and could consider them simple fun. Now, up close and personal, she was a little intimidated to be back here, standing so close to the most dangerous creature she'd ever known – the man with the capacity to own her soul.

"If you'll let me," he whispered, easily reading her thoughts, his nose coming into contact with her temple, sliding across and down, past her hairline and over the whorl of her ear.

"How… do you do that?" she breathlessly asked as his hands reached out to lightly rest upon her waist, pulling them together until they meshed.

Draco placed a small kiss upon her lobe, and when she didn't protest, he moved down over her throat, sniffing as he went, reacquainting himself with her scent. "Not sure," he admitted. "Another unknown to add to the long list of them – like the daylight walking, the feeding off of…"

"Sex," she moaned as he licked her pulse point. "Can you still do that?" Her fingernails dug into his upper arms.

He chuckled and let his fangs graze her throat. "Do you want to find out?"

"You're asking me now - not just taking as you please anymore?"

"I want your happiness, Hermione," he murmured, caressing her cheek with his own. "I let you go because you needed me to, hoping every day that you'd want to come back on your own - and you have. Now, I want you to have me any way _you_ want, my beloved. You say how much and when, and I'll do anything to you that you want. If you don't want me to mate you again, I won't. We can just be lovers. Or if you want... I would love to make you my Concubine again. But it's your decision to make, freely. You're all that matters to me - nothing else is as important as your pleasure."

He nipped very gently with his blunted teeth over her pulse, careful not to let his sharp canines pierce her flesh. It was a remarkable measure of control on his part, she knew from her research over the time they'd been separated.

She'd used their year-and-then-some time apart to learn all that she could about Vampires, traveling the world to speak to them - but only after returning her parents' memories and fixing that relationship, and reconnecting with her surviving friends from school and the Order. She'd recently agreed to take on the position of Head of the Department of Magical Creatures-Being Division in the new Ministry in London to keep in close, personal contact with the various Vampire Clans (Edward Worple had even come to visit her in her office one afternoon and they'd swapped stories over tea and biscuits that he'd brought in from his most recent trip to Japan - where he'd been when the plague had struck Britain).

In that long stretch of time that she and Draco had been 'divorced,' Hermione had allowed herself time to think about her life and what she wanted out of it. She'd realized that she'd missed her ex-lover - not just for the sex, although that was _certainly_ a factor, but also for his companionship. When she'd spent months obsessively working on a cure for the zombie epidemic, he'd been right there with her, along for the ride. He'd cared for her in ways no one ever had, attentive to her needs and intuitively understanding her moods. Regardless of their bad past history as children together, and despite his role in the war, everything had changed between them the day he'd been Embraced. He'd become someone else as a result of that experience - someone unconcerned with blood prejudice any longer. He'd grown up, and the truth was, she'd liked the man he'd matured into. Yes, he'd retained his Slytherin underhandedness - as evidenced by how he'd handled their bonding and his withholding of information from her - but she really felt that he'd meant it when he'd said he was sorry for his bad judgment. That he'd been willing to let her go - to break their bond - to prove his sincerity had been the ultimate apology.

It was that revelation that provided the opening to let Draco back into her life. One night six months ago, she'd lowered her mental blocks and called for him, hoping something might still exist between them that would alert him to her interest. He'd responded immediately, as if he'd been waiting for the opportunity. From that point forward, they'd slowly, tentatively reconnected, their relationship evolving over time in a natural progression of stages from talking to holding hands to touching to kissing to... other things. It had been like a regular love affair, only the dating had all taken place in her head, while she was asleep.

Yes, leaving him had been the right decision for them both, despite the pain it had caused, as they'd both used the time to grow, to establish themselves into the new world order that had risen from the ashes of war and disease, and to determine what was most important in life.

She scraped her fingernails with light pressure along his skin, her arms coming about his neck, and ran her touch through his long hair, luxuriating in the feel of it once more against her skin. "Are you saying that you'll agree to be _my_ slave now?"

"Absolutely."

"Will you wear a collar for me?" she joked.

"If you want." He teased her flesh with light licks and kisses, driving her mad with want very quickly. "Do you forgive me?"

Gods, she'd missed this - the real thing. Dreams had been nice, but flesh on flesh was the best. Her left leg ran up the outside of his, and she wrapped it around his thighs, pulling their cores together. "I already said I did in the dream last night."

"Say it again," he requested, his tone desperate, his erection hard through his slacks, against the juncture of her thighs. "Say it's okay to do this."

"I want you," she breathed against his neck, biting down with a bit of strength - enough to leave an impression of her teeth. "I forgive you. I love you."

Finally, she surrendered to the words and the feelings she'd been holding back for so long, and they – more than anything else – set her free at long last. With a groan, Draco gathered her up into his arms and in a flash they were gone from the library and appeared in his bedroom. Their clothes were banished with a negligent wave of her wand, and their bodies came together once more as if it were the most natural fit in the world.

They missed afternoon tea - and dinner. Mopsy didn't mind at all.

_**X~~~~~~~~~~X**_

_**EPILOGUE #2**_

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**5 June, 2003**_

Hermione was married under the moonlight in the gardens. Everyone she loved who still lived was in attendance.

Her parents had come all the way from Australia, where they'd decided to stay after having their memories restored by her last year. The Weasleys were in attendance, too. They had taken a bad hit between the war and the plague, and now there was only Ginny, Charlie, Arthur, Bill, and Fleur left. But they had all come, and they had stood up with everyone else and watched her bind her life to Draco's with cheers and smiles for her, no matter their reservations about her marrying a Vampire - and especially a _Malfoy_ one (only Ginny thought it romantic). Of her school friends and former teachers, Hermione had further reconnected with Neville Longbottom, Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Aurora Sinistra, Lavender Brown, Seamus Finnegan and Luna Lovegood over the past few months, and although it had taken some serious convincing them, too, that her lover had changed - literally - they had all shown up tonight to celebrate this important moment with her.

On Draco's side, he had only his aunt, Andromeda, his nephew, Teddy, and his Vampire brothers - the friends who had stayed with him through their trial by fire. Of the latter, some of them still lived at the Manor, but over the last year and a half, others had moved out to adjust to their new lives the best they could.

Lucian Bole and Peregine Derrick had been the first to leave the Manor in June the year before, once London had been sanctioned 'clean' and the quarantine lifted by the Muggle government and the new Ministry. The two men, along with Mafalda and Latisha had set up residence in a large penthouse suite of some posh hotel overlooking Hyde Park (in effect, they simply took the spot over, and no one dared dispute their ownership after the fact, given that they were two rather intimidating Vampires). Presumably, the "fuck-fest" recommenced there, at least for a few more months.

The two women, however, finally decided this past October that they had wanted to get out and see what the newly bustling city had to offer and parted ways with their Masters, who removed their collars and wished them well. Recently, Lucian had found a girl and convinced her to come home to share with Peregrine. They were "downsizing," according to a grinning Perri, who had his arm about the lovely, dark-skinned witch, while Lucian nibbled on her neck. Meanwhile, Mafalda and Latisha were making their way through the eligible male population of London, enjoying being alive and experiencing freedom. They were all very amicable towards each other as they met again at the wedding for the first time in almost seven months.

Theodore and Felicity had been next. They journeyed to Nott's abandoned family home in August, 2002 and made it their permanent residence. Tonight, they'd skipped out on most of the ceremony, too excited to shag in their old room inside the house, according to a chuckling Blaise. Apparently, Nott and Felicity were happy, but she was still very much human and didn't seem willing to be Embraced to change that fact. The jury was still out on them lasting as a result.

Abigail had let Zabini Embrace her soon after they moved into his family's posh townhouse closer to London this past January. Turning her had been allowed by special dispensation by the Giovanni Clan leaders – who had a set rule that Giovanni only turned people who were blood family. It was considered Blaise's 'reward' for his part in stopping the Vampire-zombie plague from spreading, and for destroying the one who had been behind the bio-terror attack (the Giovanni had been absolutely disgusted by Warrington's purposeful spread of the disease by biting his own sire, and were brimming with approval for Zabini helping Draco kill and dispose of the blasphemous Tremere).

Zabini boasted at the reception that his Abby was a better Vampire than he was, and it was clear from their banter that their match was a good set. How they satisfied their need for fresh blood was anyone's guess, but Hermione thought it quite likely that they got their needs met through a blood bank, for it didn't seem likely that Abby would tolerate a third-party in their relationship – not even a Childer. She seemed rather possessive of not only Zabini's attentions, but his body parts and fluids as well. For his part, Blaise seemed to love her claim upon him.

Not everyone was in attendance, though. Warrington was obviously, thankfully dead. Patricia had left Britain, as promised, never to return. Last Hermione had heard, the witch was living in Hawaii, an island chain that was known to have no Vampires living upon it and was sunny for longer periods of the day because of its proximity to the Equator. They had no contact after a few owls in the couple of months after her Master's death.

Surprisingly, Eleanor had Apparated in to the wedding just before the ceremony had begun, looking as lovely and healthy as she'd always had the potential to be, but she was dateless. Hermione noticed her looking for her former Master in the crowd, but there was no sign of Evan. She hadn't heard from him since he'd left the Manor the day he'd set Ellie free. She didn't think he'd ever show his face to any of them again, honestly.

Adrian and Vicky had split in May last year. She'd apparently scratched that itch for the rough, kinky stuff, and settled on a nice, normal wizard who owned a small bookshop in Manchester, looking to start a family. Nine months later, she'd delivered a healthy baby boy. Because she was a mother to a three month old now, she'd sent her regrets at not being able to attend the midnight services. However, she'd made up for her absence in the form of an old text on Toreador Vampires from the sixteenth century that her husband had found at her request. Draco had had to physically take the book out of her hands and hide it to prevent her from ditching their plans of a honeymoon in favour of staying put and cracking open the book.

Adrian, meanwhile, had avoided emotional entanglements since Vicky, sticking to one-offs he purchased off the streets for his food and sex needs, as he'd been really hurt by his ex so callously dumping him, and then further rubbing salt in the wound by getting up the duff so soon after their split. Time healed all wounds, though – or so it seemed, as he was now sincerely chatting up Ginny, who appeared rather receptive to his advances. Her friend would have to be warned of his kinky bedroom preferences, of course, but even then, it seemed rather likely that Gin would make a good counter to Adrian's point. The two were very much alike in terms of seeking out a thrill to conquer, and Hermione knew that Ron's little sister had a bold heart and a daring, inquisitive side that just might match Pucey's wild nature. It could be fun for both of them. It could be more. Who knew?

To no one's surprise, Goyle still lived at the Manor and had married Sage within a month of the cure having been distributed to the Muggles. To the young couple's luck and delight, it turned out the Gangrel had a penchant for monogamy as well – something to do with a wolf infusion of blood in the line somewhere – and so Greg was able to take a mate and grant her a part of his life-energy as a result. She would age, he'd been told by the Gangrel Clan leader in Europe, but it would be very, _very_ slowly. The Clan leader's own mate was human, and she was over two-hundred, and still looked no older than a woman in her mid-twenties.

It was nice to have another female in the large Manor house, honestly, and Greg seemed good company for Draco. The four often spent time together - moonlight picnics on the lawn or working together in the greenhouse, playing Muggle card or board games in the study, reading in the library to each other, trips into London to visit The Leaky Cauldron, to shop in Diagon Alley, to see a Muggle movie or concert, or to watch a wizarding play, and trips to nighttime Quidditch matches. Hermione was teaching Sage how to play the piano, too (all of those lessons her parents had forced her to take as a child were paying off finally!). It was fun to be roommates, in a sense, again. She'd missed that type of familial company since leaving Hogwarts.

As she and Draco stood talking with Greg and Sage now, she noted Goyle was absently stroking the Grangrel crest that had been tattooed on the inside of his wife's left wrist – the mark of his mate. It was a very sensual and loving thing to do, Hermione thought, and she decided right then and there that she wanted a Toreador rose tattooed on her – only some place a little more risqué.

Her new husband stroked over the sway of her hind, obviously having read her thoughts, letting her know where the tattoo should go. As discreetly as possible, Hermione took his hand and eased it over a spot just below her left hip, in the soft skin just inside the cradle of her pelvis. That's where she would want her tattoo to be, she thought.

A low growl escaped Draco's throat, and it didn't take a genius to understand that it was an overtly sexual sound. Greg stopped in mid-sentence at hearing the tone, his gaze passing back and forth between his best friend and her, and then he actually blushed as he caught on.

"Greg, my darling, I'm parched," Sage directed him, wise in the subtle cues (or not so much, in Hermione and Draco's case) of couples, and trying to find a polite way out of the conversation to give the happy bride and groom a moment alone. "Would you like a champagne, too?" she asked them.

"No, thank you," Hermione replied and covertly pinched the back of her lover's wandering hand in warning as he tried to inch it down her form from where she'd earlier left it at rest. "Go and enjoy yourselves. We'll catch up later."

They went, and Hermione whirled on her husband, intending upon having a nice long talk with her husband about behaving himself for a few more hours until the shindig ended. That conversation, however, ended up with him dragging her out of the garden, into his private study, and shagging her across the massive wooden desk from behind.

"Right here," he pushed her silky wedding dress higher up her waist to bare as much skin as possible and traced the spot on her swayed spine, just above her bottom – the spot that he'd caressed earlier. "My rose, right here." He sank deep into her in a slow, torturous rhythm as he stroked her sensitive flesh.

"And what" – PANT WIGGLE GROAN – "about a tattoo for you?"

They discussed it in detail… when they could actually talk beyond muttered profanities and sultry cajoling of each other to fuck harder, thrust deeper, and moan louder. Hermione was actually shouting her mate's name in a chanted prayer like he was her own special deity as he brought her closer and closer to climax.

"Say 'yes' to the tattoo, _please_," he bid, surging faster into her, about to lose his grip on sanity. "And I'll get one for you, anywhere you want. I really… want that rose… right here… to look at… when I'm… making love... to you," he gasped between snapping drives of his hips, tightening up, ready to spill into her.

Honestly, how could she say 'no' to such a fantastic, open-ended deal like that? Besides, she knew just the perfect location for his mark – right above the smooth skin of his heart where she could always see it when he took his shirt off, and be able to kiss it as she lay in his arms to sleep. For a trade like that, she'd get the rose where he asked.

They came together in agreement – and in other ways – a moment later, and Hermione nearly sobbed with how wonderful it was to feel him filling her to completion in every way once again.

How could she have denied him for over a year? She'd been such a fool to punish them both with distance, even if it had been time necessary for them both to grow on their own, outside of the worlds of expectation each had had thrust upon them their whole lives.

He nuzzled her throat and kissed her cheek. "We'll make it up to each other. We have an eternity to do so now, my mate."

She nodded. Draco was right. Their second bonding had taken root just last night - she'd made him wait until they both felt it was right - and their life-long commitment had been publicly made today in front of their families and friends, and signed and sealed on paper that would be filed at the Ministry later that day for permanent record. They now had all the time they needed to enjoy living...

...for there was no fear of Death when you were in love.

Immortality was finally theirs.

_**~FIN~**_


	7. Chapter 7: Epilogue 2

_**EPILOGUE #2**_

_**Malfoy Manor – Wiltshire, England**_

_**5 June, 2003**_

Hermione was married under the moonlight in the gardens. Everyone she loved who still lived was in attendance.

Her parents had come all the way from Australia, where they'd decided to stay after having their memories restored by her last year. The Weasleys were in attendance, too. They had taken a bad hit between the war and the plague, and now there was only Ginny, Charlie, Arthur, Bill, and Fleur left. But they had all come, and they had stood up with everyone else and watched her bind her life to Draco's with cheers and smiles for her, no matter their reservations about her marrying a Vampire - and especially a _Malfoy_ one (only Ginny thought it romantic). Of her school friends and former teachers, Hermione had further reconnected with Neville Longbottom, Minerva McGonagall, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Aurora Sinistra, Lavender Brown, Seamus Finnegan and Luna Lovegood over the past few months, and although it had taken some serious convincing them, too, that her lover had changed - literally - they had all shown up tonight to celebrate this important moment with her.

On Draco's side, he had only his aunt, Andromeda, his nephew, Teddy, and his Vampire brothers - the friends who had stayed with him through their trial by fire. Of the latter, some of them still lived at the Manor, but over the last year and a half, others had moved out to adjust to their new lives the best they could.

Lucian Bole and Peregine Derrick had been the first to leave the Manor in June the year before, once London had been sanctioned 'clean' and the quarantine lifted by the Muggle government and the new Ministry. The two men, along with Mafalda and Latisha had set up residence in a large penthouse suite of some posh hotel overlooking Hyde Park (in effect, they simply took the spot over, and no one dared dispute their ownership after the fact, given that they were two rather intimidating Vampires). Presumably, the "fuck-fest" recommenced there, at least for a few more months.

The two women, however, finally decided this past October that they had wanted to get out and see what the newly bustling city had to offer and parted ways with their Masters, who removed their collars and wished them well. Recently, Lucian had found a girl and convinced her to come home to share with Peregrine. They were "downsizing," according to a grinning Perri, who had his arm about the lovely, dark-skinned witch, while Lucian nibbled on her neck. Meanwhile, Mafalda and Latisha were making their way through the eligible male population of London, enjoying being alive and experiencing freedom. They were all very amicable towards each other as they met again at the wedding for the first time in almost seven months.

Theodore and Felicity had been next. They journeyed to Nott's abandoned family home in August, 2002 and made it their permanent residence. Tonight, they'd skipped out on most of the ceremony, too excited to shag in their old room inside the house, according to a chuckling Blaise. Apparently, Nott and Felicity were happy, but she was still very much human and didn't seem willing to be Embraced to change that fact. The jury was still out on them lasting as a result.

Abigail had let Zabini Embrace her soon after they moved into his family's posh townhouse closer to London this past January. Turning her had been allowed by special dispensation by the Giovanni Clan leaders – who had a set rule that Giovanni only turned people who were blood family. It was considered Blaise's 'reward' for his part in stopping the Vampire-zombie plague from spreading, and for destroying the one who had been behind the bio-terror attack (the Giovanni had been absolutely disgusted by Warrington's purposeful spread of the disease by biting his own sire, and were brimming with approval for Zabini helping Draco kill and dispose of the blasphemous Tremere).

Zabini boasted at the reception that his Abby was a better Vampire than he was, and it was clear from their banter that their match was a good set. How they satisfied their need for fresh blood was anyone's guess, but Hermione thought it quite likely that they got their needs met through a blood bank, for it didn't seem likely that Abby would tolerate a third-party in their relationship – not even a Childer. She seemed rather possessive of not only Zabini's attentions, but his body parts and fluids as well. For his part, Blaise seemed to love her claim upon him.

Not everyone was in attendance, though. Warrington was obviously, thankfully dead. Patricia had left Britain, as promised, never to return. Last Hermione had heard, the witch was living in Hawaii, an island chain that was known to have no Vampires living upon it and was sunny for longer periods of the day because of its proximity to the Equator. They had no contact after a few owls in the couple of months after her Master's death.

Surprisingly, Eleanor had Apparated in to the wedding just before the ceremony had begun, looking as lovely and healthy as she'd always had the potential to be, but she was dateless. Hermione noticed her looking for her former Master in the crowd, but there was no sign of Evan. She hadn't heard from him since he'd left the Manor the day he'd set Ellie free. She didn't think he'd ever show his face to any of them again, honestly.

Adrian and Vicky had split in May last year. She'd apparently scratched that itch for the rough, kinky stuff, and settled on a nice, normal wizard who owned a small bookshop in Manchester, looking to start a family. Nine months later, she'd delivered a healthy baby boy. Because she was a mother to a three month old now, she'd sent her regrets at not being able to attend the midnight services. However, she'd made up for her absence in the form of an old text on Toreador Vampires from the sixteenth century that her husband had found at her request. Draco had had to physically take the book out of her hands and hide it to prevent her from ditching their plans of a honeymoon in favour of staying put and cracking open the book.

Adrian, meanwhile, had avoided emotional entanglements since Vicky, sticking to one-offs he purchased off the streets for his food and sex needs, as he'd been really hurt by his ex so callously dumping him, and then further rubbing salt in the wound by getting up the duff so soon after their split. Time healed all wounds, though – or so it seemed, as he was now sincerely chatting up Ginny, who appeared rather receptive to his advances. Her friend would have to be warned of his kinky bedroom preferences, of course, but even then, it seemed rather likely that Gin would make a good counter to Adrian's point. The two were very much alike in terms of seeking out a thrill to conquer, and Hermione knew that Ron's little sister had a bold heart and a daring, inquisitive side that just might match Pucey's wild nature. It could be fun for both of them. It could be more. Who knew?

To no one's surprise, Goyle still lived at the Manor and had married Sage within a month of the cure having been distributed to the Muggles. To the young couple's luck and delight, it turned out the Gangrel had a penchant for monogamy as well – something to do with a wolf infusion of blood in the line somewhere – and so Greg was able to take a mate and grant her a part of his life-energy as a result. She would age, he'd been told by the Gangrel Clan leader in Europe, but it would be very, _very_ slowly. The Clan leader's own mate was human, and she was over two-hundred, and still looked no older than a woman in her mid-twenties.

It was nice to have another female in the large Manor house, honestly, and Greg seemed good company for Draco. The four often spent time together - moonlight picnics on the lawn or working together in the greenhouse, playing Muggle card or board games in the study, reading in the library to each other, trips into London to visit The Leaky Cauldron, to shop in Diagon Alley, to see a Muggle movie or concert, or to watch a wizarding play, and trips to nighttime Quidditch matches. Hermione was teaching Sage how to play the piano, too (all of those lessons her parents had forced her to take as a child were paying off finally!). It was fun to be roommates, in a sense, again. She'd missed that type of familial company since leaving Hogwarts.

As she and Draco stood talking with Greg and Sage now, she noted Goyle was absently stroking the Grangrel crest that had been tattooed on the inside of his wife's left wrist – the mark of his mate. It was a very sensual and loving thing to do, Hermione thought, and she decided right then and there that she wanted a Toreador rose tattooed on her – only some place a little more risqué.

Her new husband stroked over the sway of her hind, obviously having read her thoughts, letting her know where the tattoo should go. As discreetly as possible, Hermione took his hand and eased it over a spot just below her left hip, in the soft skin just inside the cradle of her pelvis. That's where she would want her tattoo to be, she thought.

A low growl escaped Draco's throat, and it didn't take a genius to understand that it was an overtly sexual sound. Greg stopped in mid-sentence at hearing the tone, his gaze passing back and forth between his best friend and her, and then he actually blushed as he caught on.

"Greg, my darling, I'm parched," Sage directed him, wise in the subtle cues (or not so much, in Hermione and Draco's case) of couples, and trying to find a polite way out of the conversation to give the happy bride and groom a moment alone. "Would you like a champagne, too?" she asked them.

"No, thank you," Hermione replied and covertly pinched the back of her lover's wandering hand in warning as he tried to inch it down her form from where she'd earlier left it at rest. "Go and enjoy yourselves. We'll catch up later."

They went, and Hermione whirled on her husband, intending upon having a nice long talk with her husband about behaving himself for a few more hours until the shindig ended. That conversation, however, ended up with him dragging her out of the garden, into his private study, and shagging her across the massive wooden desk from behind.

"Right here," he pushed her silky wedding dress higher up her waist to bare as much skin as possible and traced the spot on her swayed spine, just above her bottom – the spot that he'd caressed earlier. "My rose, right here." He sank deep into her in a slow, torturous rhythm as he stroked her sensitive flesh.

"And what" – PANT WIGGLE GROAN – "about a tattoo for you?"

They discussed it in detail… when they could actually talk beyond muttered profanities and sultry cajoling of each other to fuck harder, thrust deeper, and moan louder. Hermione was actually shouting her mate's name in a chanted prayer like he was her own special deity as he brought her closer and closer to climax.

"Say 'yes' to the tattoo, _please_," he bid, surging faster into her, about to lose his grip on sanity. "And I'll get one for you, anywhere you want. I really… want that rose… right here… to look at… when I'm… making love... to you," he gasped between snapping drives of his hips, tightening up, ready to spill into her.

Honestly, how could she say 'no' to such a fantastic, open-ended deal like that? Besides, she knew just the perfect location for his mark – right above the smooth skin of his heart where she could always see it when he took his shirt off, and be able to kiss it as she lay in his arms to sleep. For a trade like that, she'd get the rose where he asked.

They came together in agreement – and in other ways – a moment later, and Hermione nearly sobbed with how wonderful it was to feel him filling her to completion in every way once again.

How could she have denied him for over a year? She'd been such a fool to punish them both with distance, even if it had been time necessary for them both to grow on their own, outside of the worlds of expectation each had had thrust upon them their whole lives.

He nuzzled her throat and kissed her cheek. "We'll make it up to each other. We have an eternity to do so now, my mate."

She nodded. Draco was right. Their second bonding had taken root just last night - she'd made him wait until they both felt it was right - and their life-long commitment had been publicly made today in front of their families and friends, and signed and sealed on paper that would be filed at the Ministry later that day for permanent record. They now had all the time they needed to enjoy living...

...for there was no fear of Death when you were in love.

Immortality was finally theirs.

_**~FIN~**_


End file.
